Salvador Dali, born in Spain is one of the most known artists of the surrealist art movement, despite being hated by many of the artists of the movement. Master of his art, loved attention through his art pieces and controversies revolving around his life, yet his mustache never went down. It stood right there through his course of life and even after.
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Dali produced over 150 paintings in his career using almost all materials that could be painted or used as a medium to paint. The majority of his time he produced paintings using oil paints, linseed oil on canvas. He also incorporated egg yolk with vinegar or water to give the canvass a permanent and fast-drying painting medium.
The multifaceted personality of Dali was also visible through his art, apart from his paintings he invested his creative gift in the creative area of sculptures, theatrical production, costume design, and paint explosions.
Despite being expelled from the art school twice Dali made sure to leave a legacy of his own and every piece of art he created had a symbolic meaning to it and some of his frequent symbolic objects were:
Eggs
Also a Christian symbol of the resurrection of Christ, for Dali it also became a symbol of life as it embodies the idea of birth and rejuvenation in the endless cycle of life. The endless cycle of life is like the shape of an egg which neither ends nor has any beginning and is also signifies hope and love.
Dawers
Dali used drawers in his work not only on the body but also on the face of his paintings as an expression of Freud’s theories, which looks into the unconscious drives of a human to understand the behavior. The drawers also emerged as a representation of the concealed sexuality of women which no longer had to be kept as a secret as they are known and no longer to be feared.
Ants
Dali used ants to show his desires and fantasies and at the same time the horrors that haunt him. When Dali was five years old he saw how ants ate another insect just leaving its shell, through that he drew inspiration to show death and decay in his paintings to remind everybody of human mortality and impermanence.
Elephants
Dali made use of elephants in several of his works and had elongated and multi-jointed legs and carried objects on their backs. They were a symbol of future and strength, and the details on these elephants also showed that they carried obelisks which are a symbol of power and domination.
Melting Clocks
His famous painting Clock Explosion also known as the ‘melting clock’, created in 1954 is one of the finest examples of the surrealist movement. He used a dreamlike quality and juxtaposition which is the method of rejecting harmony in work and incorporated the same with real-life objects. This work of Dali denotes as time passes it brings eventual destruction and represents the omnipresence of time and identifies its mastery over human beings. It is said that his inspiration for the soft watch came from the surreal way that Dalí saw a piece of runny Camembert cheese melting in the sun.
Lobsters
The Lobster Phone is one of the most acclaimed objects of the surrealist movement, a collaboration between Dali and his patron Edward James. Made from a conjunction of two objects which do not match each other resulting in something playful. Lobsters and phones had a very sexual connotation to Dali and through his interpretation, he aligned the lobster in such a way that lobsters genitalia with the end of the phone into which one would speak.
Dali created all of his artwork through ideas inspired by his dreams, it is definitive Salvador Dali was an unusual artist who has inspired and will keep inspiring millions through his art.
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