Salvador
Dali Print & Information Center
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Salvador
Dali (1904 -1989), was a Spanish Surrealist
painter and printmaker remembered for his
exploration of subconscious imagery. He studied
at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in
Madrid and received early artistic acclaim
with his first one-man show, held in Barcelona
in 1925. Shortly thereafter, he became associated
with a group of artists and writers, the Surrealists
of Paris, who sought to establish the greater
reality of man's subconscious over his reason.
Dali further developed his style through self-induced
hallucinatory states and began painting dream-like
scenes, where chosen images were arranged
and distorted in phantasmagoric depcitions
against backgrounds reminiscent of the Catalonian
landscapes of his childhood. Influenced by
Renaissance painter Raphael, Dal’ changed
gears in the late 1930s and began painting
in a more academic style. He was expelled
from the Surrealist Movement, and eventually
explored religious and other themes in paintings
that were never regarded as highly as his
earlier works. "The secret of my influence
has always been that it remained secret."
