Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, or known only as Dalí, was a famous painter of Spanish origin who was born on May 11, 1904, working mainly as a painter, although he was also a sculptor, engraver, set designer and writer.
For his numerous contributions, Dalí is considered one of the best painters of all time, promoter of a movement called surrealism.
Although his life ended at the age of 84, on January 23, 1989, he is still present in current history, since everything he did continues to be an object of study.
Not only Dalí’s art is worthy of admiration, but also It is worth knowing him further, with his phrases, that reflect his genius, but also his eccentricity.
Salvador Dalí quotes about art
Salvador Dalí had a lot to say about art, just like his compatriot, he even spoke about himself in the third person, although his words were interesting:
1. The two greatest strokes of luck that can happen to a painter are, one, being Spanish and, two, being called Dalí.
In addition to being a Spanish painter, Dalí was egocentric, especially when it came to art.
2. Painting is an infinitely tiny part of my personality.
3. Freedom of any kind is the worst thing for creativity.
4. A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others.
5. Dalí is a magnificent painter, but in real life he is an incredible clown, usually more interesting to everyone.
6. We all hunger and thirst for concrete images.
7. To be interesting, one has to provoke.
8. The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic feelings.
9. If you understand your painting before you have finished it, then it is better not to finish it.
10. When I paint, the sea roars. While others just splash in a bathtub.
eleven. A painting is a photograph made by hand.
12. I categorically refuse to consider surrealism to be another literary artistic group. I believe they were able to free man from the tyranny of the practical and rational world.
13. Just because I don’t understand what my paintings mean while I’m painting them doesn’t mean they don’t make sense.
14. Those who do not want to imitate anything produce nothing.
fifteen. People love mystery, and that’s why they love my paintings.
16. I am surrealism.
17. God is just another artist, like me.
18. Knowing how to look is a way of inventing.
19. Picasso is a painter, like me. Picasso is Spanish, like me. Picasso is a communist, I am not.
twenty. There are only two bad things that can happen to you in life, being Pablo Picasso or not being Salvador Dalí.
twenty-one. People should look more like their portraits and less like they do in real life.
22. Drawing is the honesty of art.
23. Instead of stubbornly trying to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make surrealism something solid, complete and classic.
24. I incorporate all my knowledge of both science and religion into the classical tradition of my paintings.
25. Surrealism served as a demonstration that total sterility and attempts at automation have gone too far and have led to a totalitarian system.
26. This great tragedy we call modern art.
27. It is obvious when my enemies, my friends and the general public pretend not to understand the meaning of the images that arise and that I transcribe in my paintings.
28. The true painter is one who is capable of painting extraordinary scenes in the middle of an empty desert. The true painter is the one who is able to patiently paint a pear surrounded by the tumults of history.
29. If you refuse to study anatomy, the arts of drawing and perspective, the mathematics of aesthetics and the science of color, let me tell you that this is more a sign of laziness than genius.
30. Progressive art can help people learn, not only about the objective forces of society, but also about the social character of their inner life.
31. Surrealism is not a movement. It is a latent state of mind that can be perceived through the power of dreams and nightmares.
32. It is good taste and only good taste that has the power to sterilize and is always the first obstacle to any creative functioning.
33. I think I am a better writer than a painter, and in this I agreed with my father. The important thing about my writing is not the style, nor the syntax, nor the discursive resources. The important thing about my writing is simply what I say, and the day will come when that will be accepted.
3. 4. I’m doing things that inspire me with deep emotion and I’m trying to paint honestly.
35. Just as I am surprised that a bank clerk never eats a check, I am also surprised that no painter before me ever thought of painting a soft clock.
36. Before entering prison, I was nervous and anxious. He didn’t know if he should paint or, perhaps, write a poem, go to the cinema or go to the theater.
37. The secret to my influence has always been that I keep it a secret.
38. Start by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do what you like, everyone will respect you.
39. The reason some portraits don’t look true to life is because some people make no effort to look like their images.
40. Now sexual obsessions are the basis of artistic creation. Accumulated frustration leads to what Freud calls the process of sublimation. Anything that does not take place erotically is sublimated into the work of art.
41. There is no way I will return to Mexico. I can’t stand being in a country more surreal than my paintings.
42. I think I am a better writer than a painter. And in this I agreed with my father. The important thing about my writing is not the style, nor the syntax, nor the discursive resources, the important thing about my writing is simply what I say, and that will come one day when it will be accepted.
Salvador Dali quotes for life
Among the large number of words and writings that Dalí said, several of them can be rescued to take into account, because they mean so much that it is possible to take them as advice for life in general:
43. Don’t fear perfection, you will never reach it.
Focusing on achieving perfection is often, if not always, a waste of time.
44. Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.
Four. Five. The thermometer of success is simply the envy of the discontented.
46. I believe that life should be a continuous party.
47. I will live forever. Geniuses don’t die.
48. Very little of what could happen happens.
49. Beauty must be edible, or nothing at all.
fifty. Life is too short to go unnoticed.
51. The connoisseur does not drink wine, but knows its secrets.
52. Give me two hours a day of activity, and I will follow the other twenty-two in dreams.
53. Geniuses must never die, the progress of humanity depends on us.
54. Errors are almost always of a sacred nature.
55. It’s not necessary for the audience to know whether I’m joking or serious, just as it’s not necessary for me to know.
56. Let my enemies devour each other.
57. What matters is creating confusion, not eliminating it.
58. The problem with today’s youth is that you are no longer part of it.
59. The important thing is that they talk about you, even if it is good.
60. What is television for the man who, just by closing his eyes, can see places accessible to the eye and things never seen before?
61. The one thing the world will never have enough of is scandal.
62. I use the words you taught me. If they don’t mean anything, show me others. Or let me shut up.
63. Everything upsets me, but nothing changes me.
64. My mother once told me that children were like knives. They don’t do it on purpose, but they cut you off. And yet we cling to them, right? We hug them until the blood flows.
65. I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of things, in order to have them in my power.
66. Happy is he who causes a scandal.
67. I believe that the sweetest freedom for a man on earth is to be able to live, if he likes, without having to work.
68. Repulsion is the sentinel that guards the door to everything we desire most.
69. It’s not that I’m good, it’s that others are so bad that comparison proves impossible.
70. If I’m going to be anything more than average, if anyone is going to remember me, then I have to go further, in art, in life, in everything!
71. There comes a time in every person’s life when they realize that they adore me.
72. Today, the taste for defects is such that only imperfections and especially ugliness seem great. When a Venus looks like a toad, contemporary pseudo-aesthetes exclaim: she is strong, she is human!
73. The problem with today’s youth is that you are no longer part of it.
74. It is better to have loved and lost than to have to wash twenty kilos of clothes a week.
75. To have respect in society, it is good to have the talent to kick the society you love in the right shin. After that, be a snob.
76. Many people don’t turn eighty because they try for too long to stay in their forties.
77. It’s funny, I’m much more interested in talking or being in contact with people who think the opposite of what I think, than with those who think the same as I think.
78. Wars have never hurt anyone except the people who die.
79. Being fond of money, as I like it, is nothing less than mystical. The money is a glory.
80. Man cannot change or escape time. The eye sees the present and the future.
81. While we are asleep in this world, we are awake in the other.
82. An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and who has no hair under her arms.
83. One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have baptized as reality is an illusion even greater than the world of dreams.
84. I dedicate this novel to Gala, who was always by my side while I wrote it, who became the fairy of my balance, who removed the salamanders from my doubts.
85. The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewelry: the one that seems most real, the most brilliant, is always false.
86. I’m going to be so brief that I’m done.
87. Each of the two halves is exactly united to the other half, in the same way that Gala was united to me. Everything opens and closes and interrelates with precision.
88. The first man to compare a young girl’s cheeks to a rose was obviously a poet, the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.
89. It will always be you and me.
90. There is only one thing more infuriating than a wife who knows how to cook but doesn’t, and that would be a wife who doesn’t know how to cook but does.
91. Where is the real? All appearance is fallacious, the visible surface is deceptive. I look at my hand. They are nerves, muscles, bones. Let’s dig deeper: it’s the molecules and the acids.
92. If I die, I won’t die at all.
Salvador Dalí’s craziest messages
Dalí was often described as a not very sane person, as , or in other words, as a madman, but perhaps the best term that fits him is eccentric,…