Salvador Dalí
By, Natalya Maturino
| Salvador Dalí was an extreme surrealist and throughout his life he cultivated eccentricity and exhibitionism, which is shown through his outrageous style of painting. This is exhibited by one Dalí’s famous paintings “The Horseman of Death”, where he took over the Surrealist theory of automatism and transformed it into a more positive method. This painting was meant to cultivate genuine delusion as in clinical paranoia while remaining aware at the back of one's mind that the control of the self-will and reason has been deliberately suspended. Its’ dark atmosphere and background lets you concentrate on only two subjects the Horseman of Death himself, and the faded rainbow in the far right. These two contrasting symbols not only contradict one another, at the same time they employ Dalí’s meticulous technique that he uses as the contradictions are portrayed as unreal dreams depicted by the strangely hallucinatory characters of his imagery. The horseman seems so large compared to the other objects that all attention seems drawn and centered on him. His dark present portrays the animosity brought on to mankind through death and fears. The colors used in this painting are dark and morbid, but seem to reestablish the true darkness of this character. The shattered buildings and dreary cliffs seem to represent dismay, but that faded rainbow seems to exhibit a small ray of hope from the cruel realities. The rainbow seems like a key element to the painting, having an equal impact as the Horseman does. The “Horseman Of Death” cultivates the viewers mind to a land of surrealism yet disillusion. Dalí always tried to capture the emotions of the subconscious mind and brilliantly did so. I would change the rainbow and make it more visible just to show a more clearer view of it and to make it more distinct. |