The Persistence of Memory — painting by Salvador Dalí completed in 1931. Also known as Soft Watches or Melting Clocks, it is one of Dalí’s most famous pieces.
One of the most recognized works of Surrealism, depicting melting clocks in a dreamlike landscape and now permanently housed at MoMA.
Key Facts
- Artist
- Salvador Dalí
- Year completed
- 1931
- First exhibited
- Julien Levy Gallery, 1932
- Original sale price
- 250 USD
- Current location
- Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City
- Donated to MoMA
- 1934, by an anonymous donor
By the Numbers
Location
Cause → Event → Consequence
Salvador Dalí, working within the Surrealist movement in early 1930s Europe, sought to render subconscious imagery on canvas. Drawing on Surrealist ideas about dreams and the distortion of reality, he produced a small oil painting depicting a barren landscape populated with soft, drooping timepieces, completing it in 1931.
The Persistence of Memory was completed by Dalí in 1931 and first exhibited publicly at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1932, where it sold for $250. The work depicts melting or soft watches draped across a rocky coastal scene, combining precise realist technique with irrational, dreamlike content central to the Surrealist aesthetic.
The painting was donated anonymously to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1934, where it has remained on permanent display. It became one of the most widely reproduced and referenced artworks of the twentieth century, frequently appearing in popular culture under alternate titles such as 'The Melting Clocks' and helping to define Surrealism in the public imagination.