Salvador Dali, (1904-1989)
Spanish painter, printmaker, sculptor, filmmaker, and writer. A modern master of the surreal arts, Salvador Dali’s works continually challenged convention by questioning the antithesis of surrealism: our normal sense of the “real.”
Dali’s Surrealist adventures began in 1929 when he painted his first Surrealist painting, The Lugubrious Game. His painting style, which reflects his academic training in its precise, almost photographic realism, transformed Surrealism by the early 1930s. Inspired by psychoanalytical writings of Sigmund Freud, Dali believed that his detailed illusionism was instrumental in the exploration of the dream imagery and the subconscious that he painted.
Dali was a theatrical and provocative persona among the Parisian Surrealists. During his extended career, Dali participated in the production of ten films, three theater productions, two operas and nine ballets.
Of all his diverse techniques, Dali was perhaps at his most virtuosic when it came to printmaking. The artist made over fifteen hundred prints during the course of his lifetime, fifty seven of which were created during the 1930’s, the key decade for his artistic development.