Jan 31, 2012

4th Feb 2012; Modern Masters - DALI

CONTEMPLATE AND KONANGAL

Documentaries on Art
MODERN MASTERS SERIES



DALI


4th Feb 2012; 5.45pm
Contemplate Art Gallery
Opp PSG Krishnammal, Avanashi Road

This is the second documentary on Dali and his art screened at Contemplate Art Gallery .


Salvador Dali was art's greatest clown, but was he also one of its great geniuses? This documentary traces the life and work of the popular surrealist artist, travelling throughout Europe and America. From his origins in turn-of-the-century Spain, to his high jinx in New York in the 1970s, it reveals this artist's fascinating life story and explains the thinking behind and impact of his most famous works.Salvador Dalí, (1904-89): Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. After passing through phases of Cubism, Futurism and Metaphysical painting, he joined the Surrealists in 1929 and his talent for self-publicity rapidly made him the most famous representative of the movement. He took over the Surrealist theory of automatism but transformed it into a more positive method which he named `critical paranoia'. He described his pictures as `hand-painted dream photographs' and had certain favorite and recurring images, such as the human figure with half-open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax.In 1937 Dalí visited Italy and he moved to the USA in 1940 and remained there until 1955. During this time his paintings were often on religious themes (The Crucifixion of St John of the Cross, Glasgow Art Gallery, 1951), although sexual subjects and pictures centring on his wife Gala were also continuing preoccupations. In 1955 he returned to Spain and in old age became a recluse.Apart from painting, Dalí's output included sculpture, book illustration, jewellery design, and work for the theatre. In collaboration with the director Luis Buñuel he also made the first Surrealist films---Un chien andalou (1929) and L'Age d'or (1930)---and he contributed a dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). He also wrote a novel, Hidden Faces (1944) and several volumes of flamboyant autobiography. He is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists of the 20th century. There are museums devoted to Dalí's work in Figueras, his home town in Spain, and in St Petersburg in Florida.