Impressive Artwork by Salvador Dali

Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dalí was influenced by Impressionism and the Renaissance master and became interested in Cubism and avant-garde movements.

Dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science, and his closest personal connections are all major topics in his creativity.

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening was created in 1944. In the artwork, the lady appears to be sleeping, and it is thought to be the artist’s wife, Gala. The painting depicts a coastline and tranquil waves. There are two suspended drops of water and a pomegranate, a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection, next to the nude figure of the sleeping lady, which levitates atop a flat rock floating above the sea. A bee, which typically represents the Virgin, hovers above the pomegranate. In the top left corner of the painting, it appears that a yelloweye rockfish breaks out of the pomegranate, spewing forth a pouncing tiger prepared to assault the sleeping lady with a rifle with a bayonet to sting her in the arm. An elephant can be seen above them with long flamingo legs holding an obelisk on its back.

The Great Masturbator was created in 1929 and is an artwork from the surrealist era. (pictured above) It depicts a deformed human face in profile facing downwards, based on the shape of a natural rock formation near Cap de Creus on the seashore of Catalonia. Today it can be viewed at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain.

Lobster Telephone is an artwork also referred to as the Aphrodisiac Telephone. It is a surrealist artifact designed by Dali in 1936 for the English poet and surrealist art collector Edward James. The piece is a mash-up of a standard functioning telephone with a plaster lobster. This is a typical Surrealist object, created by combining objects that are not generally connected with one another, resulting in something both whimsical and scary. Dali associated lobsters and phones with sexual overtones.

Metamorphosis of Narcissus was created in 1937 as an oil-on-canvas reflecting the artist’s rendition of the Greek fable of Narcissus. In Greek mythology, Narcissus's beauty attracted everyone who saw him; both men and women followed him, but he turned down everyone. A nymph named Echo fell passionately in love with him and faded away when he rejected her, leaving only her voice. Taking pity on Echo, the goddess Nemesis persuaded Narcissus to look into a pool. He fell in love with his own reflection, seeing it mirrored in the water, and Narcissus faded away because he was unable to accept his own image, and in his place the flower that bears his name sprouted. In this painting, Narcissus crouches by a lake, his head resting on his knee, and a stone hand grasping an egg mimicking the contour of his body is on the right. A narcissus blooms from the split egg.

Persistence of Memory is an artwork created in 1931 and recognized as a masterpiece of surrealism. The artist returned to the theme represented in this painting with the Persistence of Memory created in 1954. This depicts his earlier famous artwork systematically fragmenting into smaller components as well as a series of rectangular blocks revealing additional imagery between the gaps. It can be viewed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Swans Reflecting Elephants is an artwork that was created in 1937 during Dali’s paranoid-critical era. Dali described the "paranoia-critical technique" as a “spontaneous way of irrational cognition based on the interpretive critical connection of delirious experiences.” This artwork makes use of a reflection in a lake to create the double image shown in the painting. The three swans in front of dismal, leafless trees are mirrored in the lake, such that the swans’ necks form elephant trunks, the swans’ bodies become elephant ears, and the trees become elephant legs.