"The Burning Giraffe"
"Metamorphosis of Narcissus"
"Soft Construction"
"The Face of War"
"Christ of Saint John of the Cross"
Artist Essay: Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali was a Spanish artist born on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, Spain. As a child, he was encouraged to take up art; his parents recognized his talent and sent him to art school and later he went on to study art in university in Madrid. In the 1920’s, he went to Paris several times and met with fellow painters such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro that inspired him to begin painting in the surrealist art he’s now known for.
Salvador Dali’s surrealist paintings are collages of his dream images. He created strange, hallucinatory characters and images. Dali would access his subconscious to increase his artistic ability. His paintings show inspiration from classical and renaissance paintings. Themes of decay, death, and sexual images are shown throughout Dali’s many paintings, which coordinate with our theme of horror art. His work is riddled with symbols showing fetishes, animal imagery, and religious symbolism.
Dali would paint by forming a paranoid state where he could access his subconscious and paint the hallucinatory images he’d seen. He called this “paranoiac critical”- a state where he could create a simulation of delusion while maintaining his sanity. Dali would paint using a white-primed wood panel, and used oil paints to create his artwork.
The first painting, “The Face of War” fits our horror art theme as it depicts the face of war, with its eyes showing infinite death. The brown shades also add to the image as it shows death and decay. The second painting, “The Burning Giraffe” fits our theme as it shows a woman with open drawers on her body, symbolizing her subconscious. The next painting, “Soft Construction” shows the reality of the horrible Spanish civil war. The painting portrays a gruesome and bizarre monster. Next, the painting called “Christ of Saint John of the Cross” shows a depiction of Christ through the eyes of Saint John. Finally, the painting called “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” shows the hallucinatory images of Dali’s paranoiac-critical method.