Featured Artists
The Persistence Of Memory
©2007 Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Salvador Dali
1904 - 1989
La persistencia de la memoria (1931) or The Persistence of Memory is the most famous painting by artist Salvador Dali. The painting has also been popularly known as Soft Watches, Droopy Watches, The Persistence of Time or Melting Clocks.
It has been owned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City since 1934. It is, however, currently on display at the Salvador Dali Museum, in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Persistence of Memory will return to Museum of Modern Art in June 2008 as part of the exhibition Dali and Film, on view June 29,September 15, 2008.
Salvador Dali was born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain on May 11th, 1904. He was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work.
A flamboyant painter and sometime writer, sculptor and experimental film-maker, Salvador Dali was probably the greatest Surrealist artist, using bizarre dream imagery to create unforgettable and unmistakable landscapes of his inner world.
Dali often clashed with Andre Breton and other members of the "official" Surrealist circle over the content of his paintings and the right-wing views he sometimes espoused, and was kicked out of the group in 1934. Breton coined a brilliant anagram for Dali's name: Avida Dollars (which more or less translates to "Eager for Dollars"); Dali shot back, "The only difference between me and the Surrealists is that I am a Surrealist."
Dali produced over 1,500 paintings in his career,in addition to producing illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theater sets and costumes, a great number of drawings, dozens of sculptures, and various other projects.
The largest collections of Dali's work are at the Dali Theatre and Museum in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, followed by the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida which contains the collection of A. Reynolds Morse & Eleanor R. Morse. It holds over 1,500 works from Dali.
Other particularly significant collections include the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, and the Salvador Dali Gallery in Pacific Palisades, California. Espace Dali in Montmartre, Paris, France, as well as the Dali Universe in London, England, contain a large collection of his drawings and sculptures.
The unlikeliest venue for Dali's work was the Rikers Island jail in New York City; a sketch of the Crucifixion he donated to the jail hung in the inmate dining room for 16 years before it was moved to the prison lobby for safekeeping. The drawing was stolen in March 2003 and has not been recovered.
