Salvador Dalí

With his expressive face and gravity-defying moustache, Salvador Dalí is one of the most recognisable – and influential – artists of the 20th century. Famed for his paintings of melting clocks and his lobster telephone, Dalí also cultivated a larger-than-life character for himself to play, using fashion and performance to blur the boundaries between art and reality. But alongside the deliberately provocative persona lurked a fascination with fascism and a sometimes-violent temper.  

So what can we be sure of about the life of an artist who loved to self-mythologise? And how did he become the best known of the surrealists, creating images that far outlasted his own lifetime?

This is a Short History Of Salvador Dalí.

A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Dr Elliott H King, a professor of art history at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, who has studied the life of Salvador Dalí for more than two decades.

Written by Nicola Rayner | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Mirianna Pitman-Latham and George Tapp | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact check: Sean Coleman

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