Salvador Dali Report

Austin Ozier

Arts and Humanities

Synthesis Report

3rd

On May 11th in 1904, Salvador Dali was born in Catalina, Spain. Dali practiced many forms of art such as sculpting, printing, and he was also a very skilled draughtsman. Though Dali was very well rounded in his artistic abilities, he is best known for his paintings that are often dreamy and surreal. With names of paintings such as, “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening” Dali caught the attention of many critics. Dali’s approaches when it came to his popular works of art were influenced by his desire for commercial success, trying to connect dreams with reality, and the replication of paranoia.

Dali made a name for himself in the early 1900’s after he had attended drawing school as a child and the School of Fine Arts in San Femando. Because Dali was an extremely controversial artist, he got a lot of attention and many people became interested in what was to come in his future. His art often intrigued many people and Dali wanted to take advantage of this as much as possible. He was driven by the idea of becoming extremely wealthy from his works and often “sacrificed his artistic integrity” because of his money obsession. Dali was suspected to sign blank canvases and allow others to act as him in order to sell the piece for a steep price. Dali’s surrealism approach gained popularity and allowed him to do this.

The surrealistic style that Dali is best known for is not the only one he incorporated in his works. He was heavily influenced by cubism and some impressionism. In many of his works, viewers will find symbolic objects such as clocks, phones, and animals. He also included his wife, Gala, in a lot of his paintings. Dali’s fantasies, sexual and not, were often depicted in his paintings along with his dreamlike illustrations representing his desires. Dali was extremely well known for affiliating himself with the ideas of Sigman Freud and the unconscious of...