By Paul Chimera Dali Historian & Journalist   Sweet, tranquil and charming aren’t exactly adjectives that leap to mind when one considers the art of Salvador Dali. But those of us who know better know that, indeed, there are plenty of lovely Dali paintings, Dali prints and others works by the master of Surrealism that exude a serenity and calm.   One of those works was created in 1950, when Salvador Dali took to his

By Paul Chimera Dali Writer & Historian   What? There’s something about artist Salvador Dali and, specifically, about a Dali painting, that the whole world seems to agree on! Seriously?   It appears that way, when the subject is Dali’s tiny little jewel of an oil painting, “The Spectre of Sex Appeal,” one of the priceless treasures in the Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres, Spain. This diminutive oil on panel, painted when Salvador was a mere

By Paul Chimera Dali Writer & Historian   Today’s Salvador Dali painting – “Image Mediumnique Paranoiaque” of 1935 – is both typical and atypical of Dali’s imagery and style. It’s a very small picture, open and airy in parts, tight and precise in others. What was Dali thinking when the 31-year-old set up his canvas on this occasion?   Of the many mysteries that surround Dali the man, and his unique brand of surrealism, there’s

By Paul Chimera Dali Writer & Historian   “Spain” (1938) is universally regarded as one of the finest and most important paintings in all of Salvador Dali’s surrealism.   When we try our best to get inside Dali’s head – a generally impossible task, of course – we can readily see that, in “Spain,” the artist was clearly making a statement about the Spanish Civil War, which gripped his beloved country and was a nightmarishly

By Paul Chimera Dali Writer & Historian   One of the great things about Salvador Dali paintings, Dali prints, drawings and other works by the Spanish master of surrealism is that you can often see things in them that you didn’t see during earlier visits.   This happened to me just today, as I was contemplating part of a three-panel commission by Dali: his “Fantastic Landscape” – one of three excellent wall-mounted oil paintings he

By Paul Chimera Dali writer & historian   What motivated Dali? What inspired him? What was in his head before he set brush to canvas? Intriguing questions – ones often not easily answered.   But today let’s try to answer them as they apply to a work from the 1930s – a period most critics agree was Dali’s most fertile and important period. For the record, I don’t necessarily agree with that contention, since I

By Paul Chimera Dali Writer & Historian   I have a feeling Dali art aficionados are not ambivalent about his 1947 oil on canvas, “Intra-atomic Equilibrium of a Swan’s Father” (often shortened to simply “Feather Equilibrium”). They either really admire the work, or find it flat and somehow lacking in emotional impact.   Your humble blogger has always been intrigued by this unique Dali painting and I definitely fall on the side of those who

By Paul Chimera Dali Writer & Historian   A small Dali painting with a huge impact and following, “Leda Atomica” (1949) is one of Salvador Dali’s best works – masterfully painted and among the true treasures in the permanent collection of the Teatru-Museu Dali in Figueres, Spain.   Certain paintings by Dali seem to have a jewel-like quality about them, a kind of precise perfection. I’m thinking of similarly small works such as “Ghost of

By Paul Chimera Dali Writer & Historian   On this President’s Day in the U.S.A., I thought we’d take a look at a little-known and rather unusual Dali mixed-media piece that spotlights the U.S. president at the time the work was created, 1942 – President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, better known as FDR. Salvador Dali and his wife Gala were in exile in the United States during the 1940s, due to the war, spending time at

By Paul Chimera Dali Writer & Historian   “Sleep” is one of the best-known surrealist paintings by Salvador Dali; practically every book featuring representative examples of Dali’s art includes this painting from 1937.   People seem to love it – perhaps because of its relative simplicity, while at the same time due to its bizarre expression of the phenomenon of sleep. The huge balloon-like head stretched across the width of the canvas – the heavy form