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May 11, 2017

dali-ossification-dune-gare


Salvador Dalí (1904-1989),

Ossification D'Une Gare, 1984, lithograph, 31 x 23 inches. Brigham Young University Museum of Art, gift of Roger L. Ballard, 1992.


Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí was born on this day in 1904. Famously known for his bizarre and dreamlike subject matter and his eccentric personality, Dalí worked in many different mediums including paint, photography, film, and sculpture. As a boy, Dalí took a great interest in art, and as a young man he enrolled in Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. He stood out from his classmates for his skill in realism and also for dabbling in Cubism. However, he was expelled before he finished his training. Dalí's work was influenced by the Dada movement, as well as his interactions with Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso, both of whom he idolized. In the early 1930s, Dalí was disinherited by his father, due to the irreverent subject matter that he had been creating and the negative press about his eccentricities. It was at this same time that Dalí painted his most famous work,

The Persistence of Memory. Throughout his long life, Dalí continued creating works in the Surrealist style while participating in extreme publicity stunts, with varied response. He died at the age of 84 in 1989. Today's artwork of the day was created just five years before the artist's death.