Salvador Dalí in Spain

By Agencia EFE

Salvador Dalí, always unique

Salvador Dalí, Spain was the initial and final stage of his career. If the first introduced him to the world, the last served to create the myth of the modern artist par excellence.

DALÍ INFOGRAPHICS by -Agencia EFE

Introduction

With his arrival to Spain from the United States begins artistically the mystical period of Dali in which he deposits his interest in religious matters as well scientific advances, particularly those related to nuclear fusion, which is translated in his work. In the decades of 1960 and 1970 his interest for science and holography increase as it allows new perspectives for tridimensional images with the goal of giving a major sense of plasticity and space. Somehow with the third dimension he aspires to achieve the fourth that would be immortality. In the decade of 1980 he paints his last paintings inspired in Michelangelo and Raphael whom he always admired.
Conscious of the role of modern artist in the art market, Dalí was the best propagandist of himself for which he served himself not only of his works but also of his intense social life and institutional relations always seen from an eccentric point of view that sought attracting attention over the himself and his works

The “Dalinian Triangle” is the space comprised within the Catalonian towns of Púbol, Port Lligat and Figueres, where would mainly live Salvador Dalí in this time.

SPAIN SALVADOR DALI (1966-06-01) by LAMAAgencia EFE

“The most subversive things that can happen to an ex surrealist in 1951 are two: first become mystical and second know how to draw. Those two forms of force have just happened in me at the same time” (Mystical Manifest, 1951)

DALI PAINTING IN 1966. Posing in one the halls of his home in Port Lligat (Cadaqués), nor reconverted into a House-Museum. The artist lived there his childhood and youth and turned his only stable residence ever since spring 1930.

SPAIN THEATER DALI (1949-11-02) by -Agencia EFE

Dress rehearsal for “Don Juan Tenorio” staged by Salvador Dali in the Maria Guerrero theatre in Madrid.

ART AND BIOLOGY (1957-11-29) by CARLOS PÉREZ DE ROZASAgencia EFE

Painter Salvador Dalí offers a demonstration in his house of Port Lligat of how sea urchins can create true works of abstract art.

SPAIN DALÍ (1960-01-01) by -Agencia EFE

Salvador Dalí creates one of his human paintings in the streets of Cadaqués. The models are wearing Paco Rabanne dresses

SPAIN SALVADOR DALI (1964-10-28) by JAIME PATOAgencia EFE

Painter Salvador Dalí holds a film camera during the interview he gave for his visit to the city of Madrid.

DALI IN CADAQUÉS (1967-07-30) by LAMAAgencia EFE

Salvador Dalí poses in one of the corners of his home in Cadaqués, where he lives with Gala, his wife.

DALI JEWELS (1974-10-31) by PÉREZ DE ROZASAgencia EFE

“The important part has been making the experience of my life “Classic”, grant it a form, a creating myth, a synthesis, an architecture of eternity”

In the image, the painter Salvador Dalí finishes placing jewels over the models, in a tub to create a poster-photograph that he will exhibit in the Dalí Museum, inside the “rainy-cadillac” while water falls from above. The jewels, valued in 250 million pesetas, were supplied by the jeweler’s guild of the city of Barcelona.

SPAIN THEATER DALI (1964-10-29) by -Agencia EFE

Painter Salvador Dalí (l) stages “Don Juan Tenorio” that will be performed in the Spanish Theatre playing the main roles Guillermo Marín and Conchita Velasco.

SALVADOR DALI (1950-01-01) by -Agencia EFE

Painter Salvador Dalí paints Gala, his wife, beside the Mediterranean Sea in his house at Port Lligat.

SPAIN DALI (1962-10-20) by CARLOS PÉREZ DE ROZASAgencia EFE

Russian Immigrant Elena Dmitrievna Diakonova, better known as Gala, knew Dalí in 1929 and regardless the fact that she was ten years older than him they married in Paris (1932) and later in Girona (1958). His father was against the marriage and disinherited him for it. She had been the wife of Paul Eluard, the poet and lover of the painter Max Ernst.
In the image, painter Salvador Dalí, with Gala, works in a new version of Christ’s crucifixion in “El Cristo de El Vallés”, where he’s influenced by the Catalonian painting school.

SPAIN PAINTING DALI (1961-08-12) by -Agencia EFE

“Paranoia is my own being, but controlled and exalted at once by my awareness of being. My genius dwells in this double reality of my personality, this highest level pairing of critical intelligence and its dynamical and irrational opposite. According to general belief, paranoia is related with the phenomena of delirium that can be translated as a series of systematical and personally read associations. My method consists in explaining spontaneously the irrational knowledge that is born of delirious associations, giving a critic reading of the phenomena. About the surrealist plain, the paranoid-critical activity is translated into the making of objective randomness, that remakes the world and then the delirium becomes truly reality”
(Unmentionable Confessions, 1973)
In the image, Salvador Dalí looks beyond the window glass of his home where he has left, immortalized, his signature.

SPAIN CONFERENCE DALI (1951-11-11) by HERMES PATOAgencia EFE

“Picasso is Spanish; so am I. Picasso is a genius; so am I. Picasso must be around 72; I must be 48 years old. Picasso is known in all the countries of the world; so am I. Picasso is communist; neither am I”.
(Conference about Picasso in 1951)
Painter Salvador Dalí during his conference titled “Picasso and I” in the Maria Guerrero Theatre.

DALI CONFERENCE (1950-10-23) by CARLOS PÉREZ DE ROZASAgencia EFE

Painter Salvador Dali conference in the Ateneo.

SPAIN DALÍ (1953-04-14) by CARLOS PÉREZ DE ROZASAgencia EFE

Dalí is about to break a Chinese vase during his intervention in a local radio program.

SPAIN DALI MEDAL (1972-11-09) by -Agencia EFE

The Catalonian painter Salvador Dalí is awarded the “Medalla de Oro del Mérito a las Bellas Artes” from Villar Palasí, the then Education and Science minister.

SPAIN DALI JEWELS (1973-05-31) by -Agencia EFE

Salvador Dalí during the display of his last jewel, a replica of a mummy of Chinese princess that lived 65 years before Christ, in the Modern Art Museum of Madrid.

SPAIN DALI (1961-08-12) by -Agencia EFE

Dalí poses in his house near the Mediterranean Sea in Port Lligat.

SPAIN ART SALVADOR DALI (1964-01-01) by ARCHIVO FIELAgencia EFE

Dalí was inspired by both, Josep Margarit, a Catalonian military who’s portrait hung in the artist’s father house and in Diego Velázquez, the renown Andalusian painter admired by Dalí.

 

DALI IN PORT LLIGAT (1966-06-01) by DESCONOCIDOAgencia EFE

Salvador Dalí poses in one of the halls of his house at Port Lligat, decorated with starfish and a photograph of the founder of the Falange Española political party, José Antonio Primo de Rivera.

DALI IN PORT LLIGAT (CADAQUÉS-GIRONA), June 1966.- The painter Salvador Dali at his home in Port Lligat, a former fisherman's house (1966-06-01) by LAMAAgencia EFE

Painter Salvador Dalí in his home at Port Lligat, an old fishermen house and currently the Cadaqués House-Museum.

SPAIN DALI (1967-09-23) by -Agencia EFE

Salvador Dalí and his wife Gala observe the elephant that the company Air India has given the painter.

SPAIN HIPPIE PARTY (1968-01-01) by -Agencia EFE

Painter Salvador Dalí organizes a hippie party in his home at Port Lligat.

SPAIN HORSE FOR DALI (1971-07-17) by -Agencia EFE

Dali rides the white dissected horse his wife Gala has gifted him for his birthday. He displayed the gift in a fifth floor suite of a downtown Barcelona hotel and later it was moved to the Púbol Castle.

DALI MUSEUM OPENING (1974-09-28) by -Agencia EFE

Catalonian painter Salvador Dalí is cheered by the crowd at his arrival to the inauguration of the theatre Museum of Dalí in Figueras.

PRESS CONFERENCE DALI (1980-10-24) by -Agencia EFE

Salvador Dalí kisses his wife Gala minutes before starting the press conference that he gives in the Theatre-Museum that has his name.

SPAIN FOUNDATION (2009-08-04) by Robin TownsendAgencia EFE

Outside view of the place that the Gala-Salvador Dalí establishment founded in the Salvador Dalí House in Port Lligat (Cadaqués), around the area of Olivareda.
It’s a circular building that the artist used as extra workplace, mostly for sculpture and performances.

DALI WITH NEVILLE (1953-04-14) by CARLOS PEREZ DE LAS ROZASAgencia EFE

Writer and film director, Edgar Neville, chats with painter Salvador Dalí.

SPAIN GRANTED AUDIENCES FRANCO DALI (1956-06-06) by MIGUEL CORTESAgencia EFE

“I came to visit both Chieftains of Spain. The first, Francisco Franco. The second, Velázquez”
(About Franco)
In the image, the head of the state, Francisco Franco, grants an audience to painter Salvador Dalí in his official residence in the Palace of El Pardo.

SPAIN CINEMA DALI (1957-10-07) by CARLOS PÉREZ DE ROZASAgencia EFE

WALT DISNEY AND SALVADOR DALÍ IN 1957

Producer Walt Disney and his wife Lilian Bounds visit painter Salvador Dalí and his wife Gala in their house of Cadaqués, to study the possibility of making a movie together about either Don Quixote or Sleeping Beauty.

BULLFIGHTING DALI (1965-10-21) by DESCONOCIDOAgencia EFE

Painter Salvador Dalí (r) visits bullfighter Manuel Benítez “El Cordobés”, one of the most famous then, in the hotel he was lodged.

OLYMPIC PAINTING (1968-07-01) by -Agencia EFE

Juan Antonio Samaranch, national delegate of Sports with his wife and the vice-president of the Spanish IOC, Anselmo López visit Salvador Dalí in his home at Port Lligat to see his painting “Cosmic Athlete”.
The painting would represent Spain in the Olympic Games in Mexico by the end of September.

DALI AND LEAR (1970-06-19) by FIELAgencia EFE

As was usual in him he spent winters abroad. In spring he would return to his residence of Port Lligat.
In the image we see him in the Barcelona Zoo with English model Amanda Lear, visiting the albino gorilla Copito de Nieve in its cage.

SPAIN KING AND QUEEN VISIT DALI (1981-08-15) by -Agencia EFE

Catalonian painter Salvador Dalí kisses Queen Sofía’s hand in presence of don Juan Carlos and Gala, during the visit the monarchs payed the couple in their home at Port Lligat.

SPAIN FUNERAL DALI (1989-01-25) by ALBERT OLIVEAgencia EFE

“It’s obvious other worlds exist, that’s for sure; but as I’ve already said many times these worlds are within our own, they are in Earth, more precisely in the center of the Dalí Museum dome where lies the unsuspected and mind-bending new world of surrealism.”
Burial of Salvador Dalí.
In the image, the remains of painter Salvador Dali buried below the dome of the Dalí Theatre-Museum where his works are displayed.

BIOGRAPHY SALVADOR DALI (2016-01-15) by Rober GarcíaAgencia EFE

BURIAL SALVADOR DALI (1989-01-25)Agencia EFE

Los restos mortales del pintor Salvador Dalí son trasladados bajo la cúpula geodésica del Museo Teatro Dalí, donde descansarán los restos mortales del artista ampurdanés. Figueras (Gerona), enero 1989

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