By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian One of Salvador Dali’s largest and most complex paintings also boasts one of his most verbose titles: “Salvador Dali in the Act of Painting Gala in the Apotheosis of the Dollar in Which You Can See on the Left Marcel Duchamp Masquerading as Louis XIV behind a Vermeerian Curtain Which Actually Is the Invisible but Monumental Face of ‘Hermes’ by Praxiteles.”   Phew…time to come up for air!  

By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian   Shades of summer are fast descending. Reminding us that fall is about to ascend, and many of the things we associate with summer will be absent from our view as the change of seasons inexorably unfolds. It reminds me of a glorious emblem of summer while a sliver of the season’s light and warmth still remains: the remarkable sunflower. Of course, to the Dalinian mind, the mention of

By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian   Today I’m excited to consider the nearly impossible: a huge Dali masterpiece that almost literally no one has ever seen or known about. OK, maybe that’s my effusiveness running amok some. But I know for certain that, since this work was never shown in any English-language book or catalog of Dali’s work (and perhaps never in any other language, either, until it was up for sale in 2007), the

By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian COPYRIGHT 2017   I can’t say so with absolute certainty. But today I believe I’m revealing an undetected fact of Dalinian iconography that has never before been reported in any book or magazine or any other media about history’s greatest Surrealist: Salvador Dali.   Risking melodrama, this might qualify as breaking news or a news flash. I say “might,” because I cannot be positive the parallel you’re about to

By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian   (Today’s blog post is my 100th exclusively for The Salvador Dali Society, Inc.!)   Salvador Dali never lost sight of the important painters who shined long before him and greatly influenced his art – and he wanted us to remember them, too. One excellent example of this is represented in Dali’s oil on canvas, “Apparition of the Town of Delft,” completed in 1936.   This wonderful little Dali

By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian   “Call ahead!”   That timeless advice – usually reserved for dinner and hotel reservations – absolutely applies when it comes to making sure your favorite Salvador Dali painting is where it’s supposed to be.   You can’t always count on that. And unless you thrive on monumental disappointment, you must call ahead. Trust me on this (you’ll read why momentarily).   I’m reminded of this sage advice by

By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian   “Impressions of Africa,” which Salvador Dali painted when he was 34 years of age, is one of the most widely reproduced of Dali’s surrealist canvases. Surely you’ve seen it in books or posters. It’s another example of how Dali’s voracious appetite for reading and synthesizing the world around him informed his art. It’s known that Dali never visited Africa. But that fact really had no bearing on his

By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian   Salvador Dali remains a big, big, big draw. Bigger than most realize. Dali’s “Persistence of Memory,” tiny in size, has been a huge pull for New York’s Museum of Modern Art. After all, it owns the most universally recognized Dali painting – and  the most popular Surrealist picture – ever created.   It’s impossible to know, but you can bet an enormous number of visitors to the MoMA have

By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian   Today let’s consider the absolute mastery of Salvador Dali as an easel painter. Make no mistake: the man was a 20th century master. He surely earned that reputation on two key grounds: his ideas were unparalleled in their imagination and prescience; and his technique was worthy of being called Old Master-like.   I like to say that – most especially with the more subconscious-induced surrealist paintings, drawings, and

By Paul Chimera Salvador Dali Historian   Dali was a master at so many things – not the least of which was his genius at surprising us, at keeping us just a little off-balance.   In 1968, for example – when Dali was mining the psychedelic ethos with extraordinary paintings like “Tuna Fishing” and “The Mountains of Cape Creus on the March (LSD Trip)” — along comes the charming, almost completely unknown canvas, “Fisherman of Port