Salvidor Dali and Surrealism

Surrealism, n. Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.

The Surrealist movement mainly originated in the Dada movement, which primarily involved visual arts, literature, theatre and graphic design; and was characterized by deliberate irrationality, cynicism, randomness, and the rejection of the prevailing standards in art at that time. While the movement's most important center was Paris, it spread throughout Europe and to North America, Japan and the Caribbean during the course of the 1920's, 30s and 40s, by the 1960s to Africa, South America and much of Asia, and by the 1980s to Australia. There have even been some manifestations of surrealism in Russia and China. Some historians mark the end of the movement at World War II, some with the death of Salvador Dali, while others believe that Surrealism continues as an identifiable movement. Surrealism as a visual movement had the method of exposing psychological truth by stripping ordinary objects of their normal significance, in order to create a compelling image that was beyond ordinary formal organization, in order to evoke empathy from the viewer. Nobody did this better than Salvador Dali.

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali I Domenech was born on May 11, 1904, in the town of Figueres, close to the French border in Catalonia, Spain, son to Salvador Dali I Cusi and Felipa Domenech Ferres. Dali's father, a lawyer who was a strict disciplinarian, was tempered by his wife who encouraged her son's drawing. In 1916 Dali discovered modern painting on a summer vacation to Cadaques with the family of Ramon Pichot, a local artist who made regular trips to Paris. In 1922 Dali attended the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts and moved in to the students' residence in Madrid, there he met the artists Luis Bunuel and Federico Garcia Lorca with whom he would become great friends while studying together at the school. Dali normally drew attention as an eccentric, wearing long hair and sideburns, coats, stockings and knee breeches in the fashion style of a century earlier. But his paintings, where he experimented with cubism, got him the most attention from his fellow students. Dali also experimented with Dada, which arguably influenced most of his work throughout his life. He became close friends with poet Federico Garcia Lorca, with whom he was rumored to be romantically involved with. Dali was expelled from the Academy in 1926 shortly before his final exams when he stated that no one on the faculty was competent enough to examine him. Dali produced over 1,500 paintings