As I woke up one morning, I was thinking about my room when I was young, and the two Salvador Dalí posters that I had hanging on the wall, alongside my beloved Beatles pictures from the white double album. One poster had elephants with some enormously long legs; the other was of a man on his way out of an egg, which symbolised the world.
In 1975, I bought an LP by the band James Gang, “Newborn”, just because of the cover. My favourite guitarist Tommy Bolin, had recently left the band, but I had to buy the record because of the egg-man…. Well, that’s a different story.
I’ve always loved Salvador Dalí ’s art and expression. Images of something “wacky” are just me. The Dalí museum is something I really look forward to.
ABOUT SALVADOR DALÍ
Salvador Dalí was born in May 1904 and died in January 1989, and is the most famous of all the spectacular surrealists. He graduated from art school in Madrid. In 1927 he met the painter Joan Miró, who introduced him to other Surrealists, as André Breton and Paul Éluard.
In 1929 he joined the Surrealist movement in Paris, and created surrealist film together with Luis Brnuel, such as “The Andalusian Dog” and “The Golden Age”, both huge successes. By this time, he had found his own style of surrealism. His depictions are dreams about sexuality, religion and metamorphoses, in which his girlfriend Gala Éluard, frequently appears.
Mostly, the backgrounds of the images are the deserted beaches of his birthplace, ‘Figueras’, populated with objects like ants, telephones, soft melting clocks and figurines with semi-open drawers, supported by the fork-shaped wooden crutches.
In 1938, Salvador Dalí was expelled from surrealist group, because of his political attitudes towards the dictator Franco. Like so many other prominent Spaniards, from the time he had to kiss the ass of the vile dictator.
In 1940, he moved to America, where his talent for self-dramatization and eccentric inventions earned him success, “over there”. In 1955, he returned to Cadaques in Catalonia. Things such as his Autobiography, “Salvador Dalí, Secret Life”, “A Genius Diary”, and the Dalí Museum in Figueres, are helping to keep the myth of the brilliant eccentric alive. No one can remove him from his position as one of 19th century’s most famous artists.
In the 1970s, Dalí built his museum in Figueres, where a large body of his works hang. He spent the last years of his life near his museum in Figueres, and left instructions to be buried there. So today, there he lies, in the basement, in his own universe.
Dalí was once asked about the difference between his art, and the work of the painter Pablo Picasso, to which he responded:
“Pablo paints ugly ugliness, I paint beautiful beauty, otherwise, there is no difference.”
DALÍ THEATRE-MUSEUM FIGUERES
Gala-Salvador Dalí Square, 5, E-17600 Figueres, Spain.
A traveling Motorbike Journalist, Dave has a passion for the Great Outdoors, motorbike camping, finding new trails, as well as discovering the Great Indoors, in the form of Urban Exploration or URBEX.
This has led to many exciting experiences, cultural exchanges and interesting situations over the years, as Europe is littered with post-war, post-industrial, desolate, abandoned structures and cultural sites, usually far off the beaten track. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Dave has spent the last 15 years in Denmark, which he uses as a base from which to explore the rest of Europe by motorbike, both onroad and offroad.
One of the founding partners of Motorbike Europe, with nearly 20 years experience in graphic production, over 12 years in webdesign and development, including 3 years in the design of floating structures and villages, Dave currently runs the website aka www.motorbikeeurope.com, where he covers the areas of Webdesigner, Road Writer, Photographer, Content Manager, Social Media Manager, manic networker, motorblogger, and handles any other interesting digital possibilities that might crop up.
