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As a young man, Dali attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Early recognition of Dali's talent came with his first one-man show, held in Barcelona in 1925. He recieved international fame when three of his paintings were shown in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928. In a way, this was was his prime starting block. After this, Dali went to Paris the following year, again holding a one-man show, and at this point Dali joined the Paris Surrealist Group.
It was in this same year that Dali met Gala Eluard when she visited him in Cadaques with her husband, the French poet Paul Eluard. She became Dali's lover, muse, business manager, and the source of inspiration for many of Dali's greatest works. They were married in 1934 at a civil ceremony and made their first trip to America. Dali emerged as a leader of the Surrealist movement and his painting, Persistence of Memory (1931) is still one of the best known surrealist works. But, as war approached, the apolitical Dali clashed with the Surrealists and he was expelled during a trial conducted by the group in 1934. Although he did exhibit works in international surrealist exhibitions throughout the decade, asserting that: le Surrealists cest moi by 1940 he was ready to move into a new era, one that he termed classic.
During World War II Dali and his wife, Gala, took refuge in the United States, returning after the wars end to Spain. His international reputation continued to grow, based as much on his flamboyance and flair for publicity as on his prodigious output of paintings, graphic works, and book illustrations; and designs for jewelry, textiles, clothing, costumes, shop interiors, and stage sets. His writings include poetry, fiction, and a controversial autobiography, 'The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. Dali returned to the Catholic faith of his youth and he and Gala were married in a second ceremony in 1958, this time in a chapel near Girona, Spain. Dali produced two films 'An Andalusian Dog' (1928) and 'The Golden Age' (1930) in collaboration with Bunuel. Considered surrealist classics, they are filled with grotesque images. 'The Persistence of Memory, painted in 1931, is perhaps the most widely recognized surrealist painting in the world.
In 1974 Dali opened the Teatro Museo Dali in Figueres. This was followed by retrospectives in Paris and London at the end of the decade. After Galas death in 1982, Dali's health began to fail. It deteriorated further after he was severely burned in a fire in Galas castle in Pubol, Spain, in 1984. Two years later, a pacemaker was implanted.
Much of the years 1980 - 89 were spent in almost total seclusion, first in Pubol and later in his private room in the Torre Galatea, adjacent to the Teatro Museo Dali. On January 23, 1989, Salvador Dali died in a hospital in Figueres from heart failure and respiratory complications. The Vision of Hell (1962) is a highly sophisticated painting that juxtaposes Salvador Dali's earlier style, Surrealism, (for which he was most famous) with a more classical style of religious mysticism which he developed later in life. Most critics believe that Dali's greatest works were those done during his Surrealistic period, (before the 1940 s). It was then that Dali, greatly influenced by Freud's Interpretation of Dreams tried to enter the subconscious world while he was painting, in order to fathom subconscious imagery. To this end he tried various methods.
For example, he attempted to simulate insanity while painting, and he tried setting up his canvas at the base of his bed to paint before sleeping and upon rising. During this period of his life certain images repeated themselves in his art: eyes, hands, noses, bones, crutches, clouds, mountains, blood, soft bodies and / or objects. In Vision of Hell we find all of these symbols, called cliches by some critics, but, here they seem to be much more than a trite convention. They are an expression of Dali himself. Too Dali uses the techniques of double images, hidden appearances, counter appearances. It is important to note that although in the early 1960 s (the time when Vision of Hell was painted) Dali's art was pejoratively classified as academic, religious, and mystic, and despite the fact that he was, at the time, often excluded from the company if Surrealists, Dali deliberately chose the lapse into his previous surrealist style to accomplish these portrayal of hell.
Note, his old style, surrealism, dominates these portrayal of hell (the left side of the painting), while his newer style of Religious Mysticism is used on the right side of the painting in the portrayal of Our Lady of Fatima. A close look at Our Lady of Fatima shows that an experimental technique was used around the upper body of Our Lady. The paint has texture. It is interesting to note that Dali does not use his wife Gala as the subject for his portrayal of Mary, as he had in previous portrayals of Our Lady (The Madonna of Port Lligat (1949, 1950) ); however, in vision of hell Our Lady of Fatima does hold her hands open in a similar way as the Madonna of Port Lligat. have major influences (other than Gala, who was ALWAYS Dali's chief muse) inspired Dali to create this Masterwork, which is more than 14 feet tall. The first of these was the approaching 300 th anniversary of the death of Velazques, who was very important to Dali.
The second was that there was considerable academic debate at the time regarding the true nationality of Columbus. Some were asserting that Columbus had been Catalonian rather than Italian, and Dali seized upon this opportunity to further glorify his wondrous Catalonia. FInally, the gallery which commissioned Dali to paint this work, the Huntington Hartford Gallery, was situated on Columbus Circle in New York City. The combination of these 3 things was enough to inspire Dali to wondrous heights of creativity.
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Research essay sample on Persistence Of Memory Salvador Dali
