Art Essay: Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was born in Figueras, Spain, in 1904. As a child, he craved attention, and started painting when he was 8 years old. His paintings were of dreams he had had. When he was a teenager, he went to Madrid to study art. His early artwork was inspired much by Pablo Picasso, and much of it resembled Picasso’s work. Dali’s style of painting is called surrealism. Surrealists were a group of people that painted mostly was came to mind or things from their dreams. They wanted their work to make people think and to stir up thoughts in the back of peoples minds (pg 21-22). This group of artists asked Dali to join them. However, some of them thought that Dali’s work was too strange. Salvador Dali was a very accomplished man. He made films, designed clothes and perfume bottles, made magazine ads, and worked with famous moviemakers like Walt Disney, as well as being a very successful painter.

One of his successful paintings is called The Enigma of Hitler. In this painting,

there is a telephone hanging off a branch. Off that telephone, there is a drip of water hanging. Below the hanging phone is a plate with a few small things that look like beans, and an image of Adolf Hitler. Standing at the edge of the plate, is a very small bat holding a melting spoon in its mouth. There is an umbrella and a red strand of some sort hanging down from the same branch as the telephone. This painting was done in 1939 in Madrid. The surrealists were very offended by the image of Hitler (pg 29).

            To me, this painting resembles a phone call to someone during the time of World War 2. A little before actually, because this was during the time Hitler had just gained power. The drip on the phone is a tear of someone who’s just received a phone call. Maybe someone had been killed or injured or captured, and the phone call was to tell someone in contact or relations with that person. I think it could have been someone who Dali had known or he painted it as a way of showing what was happening in the world at that time to many people.