By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Everyone has their “thing” when it comes to Salvador Dalí. Some love how mind-bending his paintings were. Not to mention his drawings, prints, and three-dimensional objects. Others are fascinated by his scientific and mathematical mind. Many couldn’t get enough of his eccentricities, especially when they went public…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Salvador Dalí was almost frustratingly contradictory. His so-called false memories, discussed in his Secret Life autobiography, added to his enigma, his living paradox. When it came to music as an art form, Dalí claimed it was woefully inferior to painting. The eye clearly triumphed over the ear, he…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Salvador Dalí was surrounded by water. He lived and worked near it, swam in it, boated on it, captured it in oil paint, and drank it instead of alcohol. Today it’s all about Dalí and water. Salvador and Gala lived virtually all their lives on the shoreline…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian I once wrote that, had Salvador Dalí painted nothing more than landscapes, his place in art history would still be assured. Of course, let’s be clear: Dalí could have painted anything; his talent was beyond extraordinary. Fortunately for lovers of landscape painting, Dalí produced some remarkable ones…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian One of the fascinating, ingenious, and at times amusing aspects of the art of Salvador Dalí is how he titled his works. Some titles are so lengthy, verbose, and convoluted – or just impossible to remember – that alternative titles were adopted to abridge things and liberate writers…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian One of my Dalí dreams? To tour an exhibition of all of Salvador Dalí’s “masterworks” in one mind-blowing exhibition! I believe it was Salvador Dalí’s leading collector (and benefactor of the Salvador Dalí Museum, first in Beachwood, Ohio, then when it relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida), Reynolds…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Salvador Dalí specialist and friend Elliott King, Ph.D., again finds himself mentioned here, due to his recent sojourn to the land of the rising son. He has shared a little about the wealth of great Dalí paintings he finally got to see in person while visiting Japan. One…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Everything Salvador Dalí did was calculated. Well-thought-out. Purposeful. Deliberate. Carefully crafted. Nowhere is this more evident than in the studies (a.k.a., preparatory sketches) he made in the process of creating masterpieces. In some cases the studies are mini-masterpieces in themselves. At least I think so, and I…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian I wish blogs could somehow give readers an actual tactile sensation of how certain paintings by Salvador Dalí can make a person feel. I don’t know about you, but there’s something about certain Dalí’s that stir my sense of awe, wonderment, and passion more than others. It’s…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian My friend, Dr. Ellliott King – a widely respected Salvador Dalí expert – has just returned from a very special trip to Japan, and now he finally got to check off a major bucket list item: seeing in the flesh the remarkable Dalí masterwork, The Battle of Tetuan….