He wanted to use it as a political movement as well-first by changing the way that people viewed the world around them, and then helping the downtrodden rise up against their oppressors. Yet Breton wasn’t only interested in the creative aspect of Surrealism. Freud’s invention of psychoanalysis and emphasis on the subconscious, dreaming mind was a large influence on their efforts to create art and literature through the use of automatic or subconscious effort, rather than logical planning. Like the members of the Dada movement before them, the Surrealists believed that logical thought was at the root of all the world’s problems. From the early 1920’s up until the second World War, Breton and a group of writers, artists, and activists in Paris formed the core of the Surrealist movement. His name was André Breton, and he was a writer and poet who published “The First Manifesto of Surrealism” in Paris in 1924. Today, the word “Surrealism” usually brings to mind the strangely fantastical paintings of Dali or Magritte, but that’s not how the movement began.

A brief history of the Surrealist Movement To others, however, it meant something a bit different. To Dali, that questioning-and-yet-not-knowing is what Surrealism is all about. To make us wonder, even if just for a second-what is real? Even at this comparatively young age, though, Dali wanted to force his viewers to encounter something indescribable, undefinable, unknowable. Later in life, Dali often spoke about his desire to confuse the viewer’s eye with hyper-realistic imagery that conveyed impossible, dreamlike scenes. It was far removed from the center of Spain-in fact, his cottage was just 25 miles south of the French/Spanish border. But Dali had already visited Paris several times, and had begun to experiment in the fledgling movement of Surrealism.Īnd it was here in this strange, rocky coastline that Dali would take the seeds of what he’d learned in Paris and Madrid, and craft something new-something eminently “Dali-esque.”

He was 27, and living in a recently-purchased fishing cottage in the town of Port Lligat on the Mediterranean Sea with his future wife, Gala. To answer all of these questions, let’s first take a short trip back to 1931, the year that The Persistence of Memory was painted.īy 1931, Salvador Dali had already attended (and been expelled from) San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid. so much so that The Persistence of Memory is still referenced and parodied in art, literature, and popular culture, more than 80 years later.īut how did this (rather small) painting garner such widespread, global interest? What makes Dali’s imagery so different from other surrealist artists of his day, or now for that matter?

Salvador Dali’s iconic painting, The Persistence of Memory, is quite probably one of the most famous works of art in the entire world, along with Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Picasso’s Guernica, and a few others-and certainly, it is the most-recognizable surrealist painting ever created.Īfter all, whether or not you know your Braque from your Baroque, those strangely melting pocket watches are instantly recognizable.

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