Salvador Dalí painted The Persistence of Memory, the 1931 Surrealist work with melting clocks.
The small oil painting is among the most recognizable images in modern art. It shows soft watches draped over a barren landscape, a dead branch, and a strange organic form often interpreted as a distorted self-portrait. Dalí’s precise, illusionistic technique contrasts with the impossible subject matter.
The painting was completed in 1931 and is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Its dream imagery reflects Surrealism’s interest in the unconscious, time, and unexpected visual associations.
A common mistake is to call the work simply “The Melting Clocks”; that is an informal nickname, not its canonical title. Dalí later made several related versions, but none is the original 1931 painting.