SALVADOR DALÍ, SURREALISM & ECCENTRICISM IN PÚBOL

The Grandma & Claire visit Can Alcover

Today, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma have visited some old friends in Can Alcover, Palma, the headquarters of the Obra Cultural Balear, OCB, that works for the Balear culture in the islands and promote it as a part of the Catalan culture.

Mallorcan language is a variant of Catalan that you can listen to only in a little part of Catalonia, Cadaqués, the town where Salvador Dalí died on a day like today in 1989. There are not strong links between Salvador Dalí and Mallorca except the common language and the Mediterranean culture but The Grandma has wanted to read more about this author and his controversial life while she was contemplating the endless horizon from the Port of Palma.

Before visiting Can Alcover, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 5).

More information: Vocabulary 5-Places

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Dalí de Púbol (11 May 1904-23 January 1989), known professionally as Salvador Dalí was a prominent surrealist artist born in Figueres, Catalonia.

Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931. Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, at times in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media.

Dalí attributed his love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes to an Arab lineage, claiming that his ancestors were descendants of the Moors.

Salvador Dalí

Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. To the dismay of those who held his work in high regard, and to the irritation of his critics, his eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork.

Salvador Dalí was born on 11 May 1904 on the first floor of Carrer Monturiol, 20 in the town of Figueres, in the Empordà county, in Catalonia.

In 1922, Dalí moved into the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid and studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. A lean 1.72 metres tall, Dalí already drew attention as an eccentric and dandy. He had long hair and sideburns, coat, stockings, and knee-breeches in the style of English aesthetes of the late 19th century.

At the Residencia, he became close friends with Pepín Bello, Luis Buñuel, and Federico García Lorca. The friendship with Lorca had a strong element of mutual passion, but Dalí rejected the poet's sexual advances.

More information: Dalí Theatre Museum-Figueres

In August 1929, Dalí met his lifelong and primary muse and future wife Gala, born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a Russian immigrant ten years his senior, who at that time was married to surrealist poet Paul Éluard.

In the same year, Dalí had important professional exhibitions and officially joined the Surrealist group in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris. His work had already been heavily influenced by surrealism for two years. The Surrealists hailed what Dalí called his paranoiac-critical method of accessing the subconscious for greater artistic creativity.

The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí

In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory, which introduced a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches.

The general interpretation of the work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the assumption that time is rigid or deterministic. This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and other limp watches shown being devoured by ants.

Dalí and Gala, having lived together since 1929, were civilly married on 30 January 1934 in Paris. They later remarried in a Church ceremony on 8 August 1958 at Sant Martí Vell. In addition to inspiring many artworks throughout her life, Gala would act as Dalí's business manager, supporting their extravagant lifestyle while adeptly steering clear of insolvency. Gala seemed to tolerate Dalí's dalliances with younger muses, secure in her own position as his primary relationship.

While the majority of the Surrealist artists had become increasingly associated with leftist politics, Dalí maintained an ambiguous position on the subject of the proper relationship between politics and art.

More information: The Art Story

In 1940, as World War II tore through Europe, Dalí and Gala retreated to the United States, where they lived for eight years splitting their time between New York and Monterey, California. They were able to escape because on June 20, 1940, they were issued visas by Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France.

Salvador and Gala Dalí crossed into Portugal and subsequently sailed on the Excambion from Lisbon to New York in August 1940. Dalí’s arrival in New York was one of the catalysts in the development of that city as a world art center in the post-war years. After the move, Dalí returned to the practice of Catholicism.

Salvador Dalí and Gala

In 1948 Dalí and Gala moved back into their house in Port Lligat, on the coast near Cadaqués. For the next three decades, he would spend most of his time there painting, taking time off and spending winters with his wife in Paris and New York.

In 1968, Dalí had bought a castle in Púbol for Gala; and starting in 1971 she would retreat there alone for weeks at a time. By Dalí's own admission, he had agreed not to go there without written permission from his wife. His fears of abandonment and estrangement from his longtime artistic muse contributed to depression and failing health.

Gala died on 10 June 1982, at the age of 87. After Gala's death, Dalí lost much of his will to live. He deliberately dehydrated himself, possibly as a suicide attempt; there are also claims that he had tried to put himself into a state of suspended animation as he had read that some microorganisms could do. He moved from Figueres to the castle in Púbol, which was the site of her death and her grave.

Dalí's politics played a significant role in his emergence as an artist. In his youth, he embraced both anarchism and communism, though his writings tell anecdotes of making radical political statements more to shock listeners than from any deep conviction. This was in keeping with Dalí's allegiance to the Dada movement.

As he grew older his political allegiances changed, especially as the Surrealist movement went through transformations under the leadership of the Trotskyist writer André Breton, who is said to have called Dalí in for questioning on his politics. 

More information: Patrimoni Cultural-Generalitat de Catalunya

There is only one difference between a madman and me.

The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

Salvador Dalí