Printable sheet
Dali melting clocks drape over a dead branch, a ledge and a strange soft figure by the sea. A surreal art printable for kids; download the free PDF.
Printable sheet
Free for personal and educational use
Download PDFPrintA bare tree with a soft clock hanging on it, another clock on a ledge, a pocket watch covered in ants, a soft figure on the ground and cliffs by the sea.
Use ochres and yellows for the landscape and silvery blues for the clocks.
Draw another everyday object melting like it would in a dream.
Dalí designed his own museum in his hometown of Figueres, and he is buried inside it.
Dali melting clocks are among the most recognizable images in all of art. They star in The Persistence of Memory, a painting Salvador Dalí made in 1931 that now hangs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Visitors are often surprised by its size: it is barely bigger than a sheet of notebook paper.
Dalí grew up in Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, and became the most famous member of the surrealist movement. Surrealist artists wanted to paint dreams and the hidden parts of the mind, so they placed ordinary objects in impossible situations to surprise viewers and make them wonder.
According to Dalí himself, the idea came to him after dinner one evening while he watched a wedge of Camembert cheese melting in the heat. The droopy clocks seem to suggest that time is not as stiff as it looks. Sometimes it flies, and sometimes it seems to stand still. The rocky shore in the background is inspired by Cap de Creus, a stretch of Catalan coast Dalí knew well.
In the middle lies a strange, soft, sleeping creature that many people see as a twisted self-portrait of the artist. The ants crawling on the orange watch were Dalí's symbol for decay. Every detail invites you to imagine your own explanation.
