Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was a Spanish surrealist painter and was born in Catalonia, Spain. He is most known for his stunning and bizarre paintings, as well as the optical illusions found in his work. His most famous and most widely seen work, ‘The Persistence of Memory’ was completed in August in 1931. He was no only confined to painting, and worked within other industries, such as film, sculpture and photography. It makes perfect sense that a master of many subjects in the art field had a highly imaginative mind and could be called unusual. His eccentric behaviour and actions in public made him more famous and gave him more attention, resulting in a wider audience and is the reason why he and his work are so popular today.

His artwork was something the world had never seen, and he truly became one of the world’s leading artists in surrealism. He has many famous pieces of work but the one that caught my eye was the “Old Couple or Musician” piece he created in 1930. This is also one of the first optical illusions I had come across earlier in my life. In my perspective, I saw an old couple at first, and are very close to each other. As I look at their eyes, I see the hats of the musicians, and this is when I first see the musicians inside the heads. I then see a man in a sombrero playing the guitar with his legs following the shape of the old man’s chin, whereas on the other side there is a woman looking at the man playing the music. The woman seems to be holding something above her head. Once I see this, I cannot get the musician and the woman in the hat out of my head, which is why it is hard for me to see the eyes of the old couple. You can slightly see the old man’s eye, but really need to concentrate and block other things out to see the old woman’s eye. Everything fits in place and the arms of the woman and the musician act as the noses of the old couple. There is also a woman stepping out of an archway, which acts as the old man’s ear. The entire image looks breath-taking as there is so much detail and really makes you wonder how much planning or how much foresight Dali had before painting the final. I really enjoy looking at this image, as all the small details are amazing. The moustache on the musician works as the top lid of the old man, or the left side of the woman’s face acts as the old woman’s eye.

This is also a wonderful piece created by Salvador Dali, and is so original compared to a lot of other work in the 20^th century. Then again, this is surrealism, which contains all kinds of psychedelic works of art. Back on topic, this work of pure magnificence takes your breath away, as it is packed full of bright colours and is just wonderful. For me, it is the blue sky that makes this picture so wonderful, as it reminds me of real life, and how the ocean is a vast and beautiful thing of nature. I just like how much the image gives you a view of such greatness. Another thing you instantly notice is how the sails on the ship are in fact, huge butterflies, which is so amazingly quirky and unnatural yet works so well and does not look forced or tacky. There are also men or some sort of beings in the left of the painting, on a rock, and seem to be cheering for the ship. They are holding sticks with what appears to be flames on them, and another man is bent over and is looking at a huge butterfly wing. Another butterfly has landed on the water, and is supposed to add some form of personality to the butterflies, to explain that they are still living beings and are not decorations, and can still move around. This entire painting makes me feel as if this is some totally different world, where everything is completely random yet still natural.