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(More customer reviews)Although he painted such provocative images as a body tearing itself apart, fried eggs and giant lobes of flesh supported on crutches, and a giant hand emerging from the ground carrying an egg, Salvador Dalí 's most enduring image is that of a soft or melting watch. It is those images, more than anything else, that define him as the arch-Surrealist of the 20th century. The fact that Dalí painted such totally impossible things with such realistic detail is what made his "hand-painted dream photographs" so popular and Dalí the second best known artist of the 20th century after Pablo Picasso.
Dalí first introduced his melting watches in his most famous painting, "The Persistence of Memory" (1931). After World War II Dalí revisited that work and broke its famous images in "The Disintegration of Persistence of Memory" (1952-1954). At the time that he was finishing that work he did a detailed study of one melting watch in this ink on paper work, "Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion" (1954). The original 14 x 19.1 cm work is on display at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.This work emphasizes the dynamic disintegration of the one visual element, the soft or melting watch, that is most identified with his work as a surrealist artist.
The image remains compelling because of its power as a metaphor. For example, I have seen this particular painting used as art to accompany such diverse topics as an article on the Y2K bug and an essay on the Qur'anic perception of time. For those who are enthralled by Dalí 's soft watches, "Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion" provides a close up in detail. Not as compelling as "The Persistence of Memory" (what painting is?) this art poster could certainly be part of a decor based on Dalí 's similarly themed artwork or could stand alone to symbolize the personal meaning of the object.
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Explosion, Art Poster by Salvador DaliSalvador Dali was born in Figueras, Spain, the son of a notary whose family came from Cadaques. The Dali family spent their summers in Cadaques, and it is this landscape that appears over and over in the artist's work, either as background or as an integral part of the composition. Dali began his career at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid where he quickly learned the fundamentals of drawing. At this time he was more interested in studying Freud and art magazines that specialized in Cubism, Futurism, and metaphysical art. In 1928 he went to Paris, attached himself with passionate conviction to the French Surrealists and soon married Gala Eluard, former wife of the poet Paul Eluard, one of the founders of the movement. As Dali became absorbed in the study of Italian Renaissance painters, the French Surrealists rejected his style as too academic in technique and he left France for New York. Dali's work is distinguished by precise and finely executed draughtsmanship of almost photographic exactitude. His subject matter is that of the Freudian dream world and of metamorphosis of objects, people, and animals, arranged in unexpected and often inexplicable combinations. A prodigious worker, Dali has produced large quantities of paintings that include portraits, landscapes with figures, figures seemingly superimposed on landscapes, and, more recently, religious subjects.
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