Salvador Dali’s Artwork

Surrealist Salvador Dali has created many historical surrealist art paintings that are a major symbol of surrealism. Though Salvador Dali was expelled from the ‘official’ surrealist art movement in the 1920s, his surrealist art has made a huge impact on the world of surrealist art.

Salvador Dali’s most infamous surrealist painting is The Persistence of Memory, a symbolic painting showing melting clocks.

This particular Salvador Dali painting is often debated, as are many surrealist paintings, about its true meaning. The most common theory with Salvador Dali’s surrealist The Persistence of Memory is an expression of Einstein’s theory that time is relative.

Another strong example of Salvador Dali’s surrealism expressions that made him one of the greatest surrealist artists of the twentieth century is The Great Masturbator.

Salvador Dali created this surrealist piece just before meeting his future wife (Gala) and this is unmistakably a painting that expressed the overwhelming grief of a matured man with needs. (Salvador Dali was still a virgin before meeting Gala.)

Symbolism expressed in The Great Masturbator include: a flower vase next to the woman’s chest (waiting to be filled), a grasshopper (who terrified Salvador Dali) and a lion’s head (alluding repressed desires).

The First Days of Spring is one of the first Salvador Dali paintings that show what will someday be his lasting contribution to the surrealist movement.

Other early Salvador Dali paintings include:

The Invisible Man (the first surrealist art painting where Salvador Dali used double images.)

Premature Ossification of a Railway Station, created in 1929, shows many classic Salvador Dali surrealism characteristics such as a cypress tree and desert landscape. Most intriguing about this particular Salvador Dali painting is the slightly deformed wall clock. (Someday this will transform into the infamous melting clocks featured in Salvador Dali’s surrealist The Persistence of Memory.

Evocation of the Apparition of Lenin is a Salvador Dali painting that displays his political views, very different from other surrealist movement activists. The dark cluster of ants symbolized death and decay.

Fried Eggs on the Plate without the Plate is a strong surrealist art piece that greatly expressed Salvador Dali’s eccentricity. This piece displays ‘memories from before he was born’, showing Salvador Dali hanging on a string near objects that may be associated with his immediate family members.

Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulders is another simple expression of the absurd mind of Salvador Dali. In this surrealist art piece, Salvador Dali decides that since he likes his wife (Gala), and he likes lamb chops, why shouldn’t he paint the two together?

Masochistic Instrument is another well known Salvador Dali surrealistic painting where he removes the solidity of objects (much like his infamous melting clocks). In this piece, it is a violin held by a woman. String instruments were another object that Salvador Dali often painted as warped.

In Woman with a Head of Roses, Salvador Dali expressed his distaste for excessive perfuming and lack of intelligence of those around the surrealist movement activist group. It is also a common trait in Salvador Dali surrealist art to replace the human head with objects.