Salvador Dali is considered the greatest artist of the surrealist art movement and one of the greatest masters of the art of the twentieth century. "Dalí was born in Figueres, Spain on May 11, 1904, at 8:45 in the morning." His birth name was Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí Domenech. Needless to say, trying to sign that name to a piece of art just wouldn't look right to he shortened it to Salvador Dalí. He was born as the second child to Salvador Dali Cusi and Felipa Domenech Ferres. Salvador Dali is given the same name as his brother, who died in infancy. He devoted himself to drawing and painting from a very early age, and in 1922 began studying Fine Arts in Madrid.
             Following his studies in Madrid and his participation in the renovating artistic debates of the 1920s in Catalonia, Salvador Dalí moved to Paris and joined the Surrealist group of painters and writers. This is where some of his best work came out of him and onto a canvas. Some of them include; The Great Masturbator, The Spectre of Sex Appeal, The Lugubrious Game, and of course my favorite The Persistence of Memory. At this point in time, most of his paintings were more like a dream-like state of mind and you have to look at them in this way to understand what he was trying to achieve. I can't really say I like a lot of his work but there are some that spark interest in me. Most of his paintings were done with oil and canvas but he also like to draw and sculpt. The painting I chose is The Persistence of Memory which was completed in 1931 and hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This painting was done in oil-based paint and was completed on a canvas. It is 13" wide by 9 ½" tall. I have always loved this painting and I do have a print of it hanging in the living room that I just bought off of E-Bay. Just looking at this painting makes me want to ask "what the hell was he on" but then I read in on of the books that he stated in an interview...