ArtCo Contemporary Fine Arts

Born on May 11th 1904, Salvador Dali was probably the best-known surrealist painter of the 20th century due to a combination of technical accomplishment, haunting imagery and thirst for publicity.

In 1921, Dali won acceptance to the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. During his student years, he discovered what would become one of the most important influences on his painting style, Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams. Dali's personal take on Freud's theory of the subconscious became the basis of his so-called "Paranoic-critical method" of painting, by which Dali discovered or hallucinated images of his own subconscious desires and painted the results. Dali called the paintings of this period "Hand-painted dream photographs"

As a result of his "Paranoic-critical method", Dali achieved his first significant recognition as an artist and soon became identified with the Surrealist movement. In 1925, Dali had his first one-man show in Barcelona and in 1928, three of his paintings were shown in Pittsburgh. 1928 also marked his first trip to Paris, where Spanish painter Joan Miro introduced Dali to the Surrealists, an artistic movement led by the poet André Breton and dedicated, in Breton’s words, to “reuniting the realms of conscious and unconscious experience.”

In later years, Dali became known as much for his decadent and outrageous social life as for his art. Later, in his final years of life, he lived in seclusion, receiving almost no visitors (with the exception of the King and Queen of Spain) and receiving medical help from private nurses. On January 23rd, 1989, Salvador Dali died from heart failure and respiratory complications.

During his career spanning more than sixty years, he was a prolific printmaker with an output of at least 1700 prints. He was undoubtedly one of the finest graphic artists of the 20th century and amongst the principal printmaking techniques he used were drypoint, etching, woodcut and lithography.

This exhibition features around 50 etchings, drypoints and lithographs, most of which are hand signed in pencil.

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