Salvador Dali

Dali's The Persistence of Memory

“Dali Atomicus,” or Dali with everything in suspension, photograph by Philippe Halsman, 1948

By the time of his death, Salvador Dalí had become one of the world’s most famous artists. Many of his paintings hung in the world’s great museums, and the general public embraced his work much more readily than that of many other contemporary artists. Yet although Dalí became most famous for his paintings, they constituted only one facet of his tremendous creative output. Dalí was truly a twentieth century Renaissance man, passionately interested in many fields of learning and artistic expression. At various times, he turned his attention to ballet, photography, film, jewelry design, furniture decoration, interior design, and numerous other endeavors.

Dalí’s paintings and other artistic creations clearly reflected the growing importance of the subconscious on the arts during the modern era. His Surrealist objects influenced later developments in pop art, and his emphasis on exact detail and clarity of line provided an alternative avenue of expression for modern art. The limp watches, swarms of ants, burning giraffes, and haunting landscapes that filled Dali’s canvases clearly showed the world the surprising relationship between the world of reality and the world of illusion. -- Salvador Dali Biography