Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali, a Spanish painter who was born in Figueras, Catalonia, was undoubtedly a complex individual. Throughout his career, Dali developed a broad understanding of numerous contradictory views.
His professional life began with classicism. He loved classical works more than contemporary ones. He undoubtedly noticed surrealistic elements in Corneille's works as well. We can observe Dali's influence on the works of Goya, Jean-Louis Meissonier, and Piero della Francesca thanks to his paintings and writings. But Dali made an effort to innovate and depart from historical norms. Salvador Dali further believed that the past defined the present. The future was predicted by the present. It is simple to understand how this is in conflict. Then he came to the Surrealist movement and was connected with communism. Both of this movement disclaimed the past. But later he turned against them as well as they were against him. He was accused of being a man of Catholic doctrine, whose aim was to draw as same as the well-known classical painters.

Despite his revolutionary inclination, he supported capitalism as he enjoyed the company of prosperous and high status people.

Such contradictions became a part of Dali’s psychological makeup. So there should be the reasons of such changing of his position.

Salvador Dalí was born May 11, 1904. He was the second-born child of Salvador Dalí Cusí and Felipa Domènech Ferrés. Unfortunately, he never saw his elder brother, whose name was also Salvador Dali. He died before Salvador’s birth. He had a sister Ana Maria. They lived in the Catalan town in Spain. Dalí’s father was a notary. He had a high social position. In childhood Dali was afraid of his father, who had a hot temper.

Salvador Dali was a reluctant pupil at school. He hated being hold at a classroom. Because of his dislike being at school, the father relocated him to a private school where French was the main language. Though Dali learned Spanish, French was to become his language as an artist. He began to draw in his childhood. He made paintings of his family and the landscapes of coastline when he was at the village in summer.

Being a boy of fourteen, he was a great painter in the making. The next years of his life, Dali continued to broaden the horizons of his mind. He read and painted a lot. He was curious about a number of things. And no wonder that he found a king of information about sexual relationships between man and woman. He worried about the small size of his sexual organ and it became his intractable problem. He suffered from it all his life. But he didn’t hesitate to speak about it openly. No artist could say as same as Daly said openly in 1929 and thereafter.

Dali began to study painting with Ramon Pichot, who was a family friend and an artist. Ramon painted in the style of the Impressionists. Due to Ramon’s being Dali’s instructor, he got an opportunity to enroll the San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid.

It is naturally that the young Dali was influenced by a number of impressionistic canvases of Ramon Pichot. So in Madrid, Dali explored Impressionist and Pointillist styles, but he gave up these approaches since he had won a betting that he was able to draw a prize-winning Pointillist painting by dashing paint at a canvas from a length of three feet.

Later in Paris he became interested in Futurist pursuit to re-energize motion and display objects from simultaneous, multiple angles. In investigation this style, Dali started to consider a means of dramatically reinterpreting existence and altering attitude. He detected the psychoanalytic concepts of Freud as well as metaphysical artists like Giorgio de Chirico, and began the usage of psychoanalytic means of mining the inner thoughts to create imagery. By the time he dropped out and left the art academy, Dali was exhibiting his paintings locally and had been from the art academy in 1924, Dali was already exhibiting work locally, and had been accepted Luis Bunuel, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Maria Mallo.

It is necessary to say that in February 1921 his mother died of cancer. It produced an impression on Dali. He was extremely pained and it was difficult for him to cope with it.

Later Salvador Dali became interested in the development of Cubism and Purism. At the same time he began to explore representationalism. It was obvious that the young Salvador was looking for his own style.

Back in Madrid Dali communicated with Lorca and Bunuel. Their relationships led Salvador to Surrealism. It is interesting to know that close friendships made Lorca fall in love with Dali. As Dali was bisexual, but perhaps even more asexual, he couldn’t give him the same affection. They tried to make love, but the experience wasn’t successful and they remained close friends.

Salvador Dali was greatly influenced by Pablo Picasso. They wrote a number of letters to each other. But still Dali was looking for his true self and experimenting with different styles.

Speaking about his studying in the San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid, the main reason of a dropping out was his father who would not support him after his getting a degree. If Dali got a degree, he would have had to earn for his living by teaching. In this case, his father wasn’t going to support him financially in Paris. So Salvador said that none of professors were able to judge him and he refused to be examined. Professors were in fury and he was expelled. But his father was shocked with this news. This fact closed the opportunities for Dali in Spain.

Due to his career Dali had forgotten about an army. So he had to spend nine months performing his military service. During that time he pained less. He managed to draw only few paintings.

Being a Surrealist painter, he was surrounded by people who took part in the Surrealism movement. He met Gala, the wife of Paul Eluard, surrealist writer. They fell in love andmoved to Paris together. She was nine years older and married. But it didn’t prevent them from getting married within five years. She was his muse and a manager at the same time

Later Dali’s relations with the group of Surrealists were broken. They criticized him and his paintings. His self promotion demeanor and indisposition to comply his actions and approach to the Surrealist agenda made the group dislike him. But he continued to take part in their exhibitions and attracted a lot of attention. By 1939 the conflict was impossible to solve and Dali broke from Surrealists. The rest of his life he was independent artist, who worked on his own style and investigated his introspective and paranoiac avenues.

The 1940s put a lot of changes into Dali’s life and oeuvre. The dropping of atomic bombs in 1945 was a sign of the ending of World War II and it started a new period of Dali’s works. He was attracted by the great power of the atom and wide range possibilities of physics. He was looking for ways to incorporate it into his paintings. He established a style he represented as ‘Nuclear Mysticism’. It combined mystical and scientific things.

During the last years of his life he painted less and less. He was a celebrity and took part in a lot of exhibitions all over the world. He was buried in his own Teatre-Museu in Figureres.

Speaking about life and art of Salvador Dali, it is necessary to say about Symbolism. It goes through a great number of his pictures.

“Symbolism is an artistic style frequently used in the arts. Symbolism is incorporated in many forms of art including sculpture, photography, and painting. Through the course of art history, it was its own artistic movement as well. The incorporation of specific symbols, shapes, colors, or identifiable images communicates to the viewer an intended message or statement. Frequently, symbolism appears to be hidden or initially unperceived by the intended audience” (Andrea Caresse MacBean 3).

Some paintings require explanation because of their complicated constructions. It is common knowledge that very often the approach of mood, emotions or thoughts is revealed with the help of symbolism.

“For example, justice, freedom, charity or other emotional ideas can be represented in a way that communicates to the viewer their intended meaning. Symbols such as a balance of weights, an eagle, and an open hand can depict these concepts respectively. Frequently figures possess elements of what they refer to in a more literal way. An example of this would be the use of an apple to represent temptation as in the story of Adam and Eve, or the insertion of a hammer and sickle to represent the industrial worker and the peasant – the two symbols for Soviet Russia” (Andrea Caresse MacBean 5).

Symbolism takes its beginning in Paris. At that time the city was undergoing some changes. Symbolists tried to reflect their inner world with the means of symbols. They referred to the world of dreams and imagination. Thoughts and feelings had a high priority. They gave privilege status to individuality of the artist. Symbolists depicted the things which in their opinion were used to reveal eternal truth, the recognition of which was necessary to humanity’s salvation.

“Interpretative form of symbols in general is a multifaceted field” (Ticiana Dine 58). This is the reason why it is difficult to understand the symbols of Salvador Dali. The paintings of Dali underwent “surreal determination and Freudian influence” (Ticiana Dine 58). Dali used symbols to give his paintings significant messages. The contradiction of hard structure and soft inside is the heart of his art and consequently his mind.

A symbol is a depiction of a certain idea. Dali created his own symbols alphabet. It is a list of his most common symbols:

Crutch – imperfection in traditions, life and death.

Ants – destruction and collapse.

Flies – collapse and a symbol of Dali’s motherland.

Keys – means to open dreams.

Grasshoppers – absurd angst.

Melting clocks – the comparative nature of time.

Eggs – recollection of the time before Dali’s birth.

Speaking about his famous paintings, it is important to find out the meanings of their symbols.

For example, in picture “The persistence of memory” is full of symbols. It is difficult to understand the meaning without a deep analysis of them. The main thing about this picture is the contrast between the hard outside and the soft inside. Everybody knows how watch looks like. In Dali’s interpretation it doesn’t have its usual shape. It looks like the watch is running out of the clock. When we look at our real clock, we can find out the exact time. But Dali’s clocks are timeless. They are too soft to function. It is a hint that the painting reflects the eternity. Personally Dali said that he was not under the influence of time when he was painting or spending time with Gala.

The idea of the picture, which is called “The burning giraffe”, he got in Vienna. The giraffe is the male monster of the catastrophe. They say he felt the mass destruction that Hitler was going to organize.

In the picture “The elephants” the elephants are considered to be a symbol of strength and power due to their weight. Dali depicted them with long and weak legs. The picture creates a sense of phantom reality. The elephant is a deformity in space.

One of his famous pictures is “Galatea of the Spheres”. He painted it after he had become interested in nuclear physics and atoms. The painting is a portrait of his wife Gala. Her face is surrounded by spheres. This picture symbolizes a try to accept his re-energized faith in Catholicism with Physics.

The painting “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” shows Narcissus who is sitting in a pool. Near him there is a similar figure, but they have some differences. The egg has been used here as a symbol of a place from which a Narcissus comes. The people between these two figures are the women of different nationalities. According to Dali, they are heterosexuals. They are rejected by Narcissus. And when the Ovid’s poem about Narcissus comes to the end, he becomes a flower. In Dali’s version Gala’s love appears and safes him from this part.

To sum everything up, Salvador Dali was a great and revered artist of his time. And nowadays he is still extremely popular. He had an unusual and in some cases difficult life. Dali was looking for his true self and it made him create a lot of outstanding paintings and masterpieces. He worked with different people and with different kinds of art. This man of contradictions tried everything he could and put himself on the map.

His paintings have lot of symbols. Symbolism goes through a number of his works. Due to Dali’s complicated vision of the world it is quite difficult to identify the distinctive features of his paintings and understand the meanings of them. On the whole, his works are impressive and fascinating. They make people think and look for essential things in their lives.

























Salvador Dali. The Persistence Of Memory. 1931. Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). New York City.



Salvador Dalí. The Burning Giraffe. 1937. Kunstmuseum Basel. Basel.





Salvador Dali. The Elephants. 1948. Private collection.





Salvador Dali. Galatea of the Spheres. 1952. Dali Theatre and Museum. Figueres. Spain







Salvador Dali. Metamorphosis of Narcissus. 1937. Tate Modern. London.

Works Cited

Dine, Ticiana, “Oneiric Hidden Symbolism Of Dali”. Social Sciences in Albania, Faculty of Communication Sciences European University of Tirana, vol. 4, no. 2, 2016, pp. 57-63.

MacBean, Andrea C., “Art and Symbolism”. Liberty University, 2013.

Rothman, Roger, “Tiny Surrealism Salvador Dalí and the Aesthetics of the Small”. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.

Shanes, Eric “The Life and Masterworks of Salvador Dalí”. Parkstone Press, 2012.

Taylor, Michael R., “God and the Atom: Salvador Dalí’s Mystical Manifesto and the Contested Origins of Nuclear Painting”. Avant-garde Studies, no. 2, 2016.

Wallis, Jonathan, Papers of Surrealism, no. 11, 2015, pp. 1-19.

















Sources analysis

Dine, Ticiana, “Oneiric Hidden Symbolism Of Dali”. Social Sciences in Albania, Faculty of Communication Sciences European University of Tirana, vol. 4, no. 2, 2016, pp. 57-63.

This source is useful to my project as it tells about the connection between Salvador Dali and Symbolism. This source says for Dali’s unusual views and his broad horizons. It is an evident that Salvador Dali used a lot of complicated symbols and painted pictures which revealed his state of mind. It explains why and what symbols Dali used in order to create his paintings. It gives a lot of information about the influence of Freud. The content of this source reveals the importance and the secrets of Dali’s symbolism.

MacBean, Andrea C., “Art and Symbolism”. Liberty University, 2013.

This source gives information about Symbolism as a phenomenon. It gives proper explanations concerning Symbolism and its artists. It helps to understand the main things about this phenomenon and to identify the distinctive features of Symbolism. It tells the history of this style and gives good examples of using symbols in painting. It shows the methods and means of constructing symbols. This source explains how to describe paintings of Symbolists and how to understand different symbols. I have chosen this source in order to describe the pictures of Salvador Dali better.

Shanes, Eric “The Life and Masterworks of Salvador Dalí”. Parkstone Press, 2012.

I have chosen this source because it reveals a lot of interesting facts about Dali’s life. It contains his biography and explains the development of his painting style. As he was looking for his true self almost all his life, this book explains the reasons of his changing a lot of styles. It gives a lot of personal information about Dali and shows the way how his talent of a great painter was improving during all his life. It gives good arguments for Dali’s being talented and having a high social standing. Besides, it contains a lot of citations from Dali’s own book. So this source can be called a reliable one.

Taylor, Michael R., “God and the Atom: Salvador Dalí’s Mystical Manifesto and the Contested Origins of Nuclear Painting”. Avant-garde Studies, no. 2, 2016.

This source explains quite unusual and innovative style which was represented by Salvador Dali. It was “Nuclear Mysticism”. It was an interesting phenomenon at that time and it still remains an interesting phenomenon today. The content of this source includes historical background and shows the connection between historical events and changing of Dali’s style The symbols, which Dali used to paint such unusual pictures, are difficult to understand without proper explanations. And the method of creating such pictures is also impressive. This source gives reasons why Dali decided to create such an unusual style, draw such innovative paintings and explains the way he did it. Besides, it gives examples and proper explanations of the symbols of his pictures which are made with the help of concepts of this style.