SALVADOR DALI: JOURNEY OF A MAN PART 2 OF 4

La persistencia de la memoria (1931) or The Persistence of Memory is quite possibly the most famous painting by artist Salvador Dalí. The painting has also been popularly known as Soft Watches, Droopy Watches, The Persistence of Time or Melting Clocks.

It has been owned by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City since 1934. It will, however, be on display at the Tate Modern, London, from June 1 to September 9, 2007, as part of the exhibition "Dalì and Film". It will then travel to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (October 14, 2007–January 6, 2008) and the Salvador Dalì Museum, in St. Petersburg, Florida, (February 1–June 1, 2008).

The Persistence of Memory will return to Museum of Modern Art in June 2008 as part of the exhibition Dali and Film, on view June 29–September 15, 2008.

The well-known surrealistic piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomises Dalí's theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time.

Although fundamentally part of Dali's Freudian phase, the imagery predicts his transition to the scientific phase, which occurred after the decisive dropping of the atom bomb in 1945. The imagery can be read as a graphic illustration of Einstein's theory of Relativity, depicting gravity distorting time.

It's possible to recognise a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange "monster" that the same Dalí used in several period pieces: it's a head (probably a self-portrait of the artist).