Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and
designer. After passing through phases of Cubism,
Futurism and Metaphysical painting, he joined
the Surrealists in 1929 and his talent for self-publicity
rapidly made him the most famous representative
of the movement. Throughout his life he cultivated
eccentricity and exhibitionism (one of his most
famous acts was appearing in a diving suit at
the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition
in 1936), claiming that this was the source of
his creative energy.
He took over the Surrealist theory of automatism
but transformed it into a more positive method
which he named `critical paranoia'. According
to this theory one should cultivate genuine delusion
as in clinical paranoia while remaining residually
aware at the back of one's mind that the control
of the reason and will has been deliberately suspended.
He claimed that this method should be used not
only in artistic and poetical creation but also
in the affairs of daily life. His paintings employed
a meticulous academic technique that was contradicted
by the unreal `dream' space he depicted and by
the strangely hallucinatory characters of his
imagery. He described his pictures as `hand-painted
dream photographs' and had certain favorite and
recurring images, such as the human figure with
half-open drawers protruding from it, burning
giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made
from melting wax.
