Salvador DALI

Biography

Salvador Dali was born in Figueras, Spain, in 1904. A few months before he was born, his older brother with the same name died. Still obsessed by this double disappearance, Salvador decided at a very young age that he wanted to prove his unique personality to the world. Endowed with a very strong character and a penchant for the imaginary world, Salvador naturally turned to painting at a very young age.

He discovered painting during a visit of his family to the impressionist painter Pinchot in 1916. On his advice, Dali starts taking painting lessons at the municipal school of engraving. From the age of 14, Dali exhibited his canvases, whose impressionist influence was felt until 1919.

After his baccalaureate, Dali studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in San Fernando. There he became known for his eccentric character and his paintings tinged with cubism and futurism. He befriends the filmmaker Bunuel. He was expelled from the Academy in 1926 for his behaviour and his refusal to be evaluated by teachers he considered mediocre.

In 1927, Dali visited the French capital for the first time. There he met Picasso, whom he deeply admired. He went to Paris a second time on the occasion of the shooting of Bunuel's film Un chien andalou, of which he was co-screenwriter, in 1929. During this trip, Joan Miro introduced Salvador to the surrealist group. Dali will meet his future wife Gala and André Breton. Dali then became interested in Freud's psychoanalytical techniques and created his "paranoid-critical" technique. During this period, he painted his most masterful pictures, filled with dreamlike and fantastic elements, full of symbolism, like his Soft Watches. He was then excluded from the surrealist movement in 1934.

After the Spanish Civil War, Dali became politically involved and declared that he wanted to return to a more realistic style of painting while retaining his originality. His themes are war, women and sex.

Dali continued to make public appearances and, after ten years of work, he opened his own museum in 1974. His latest research led him to make stereoscopic style paintings in 1975. Dali died in Barcelona in 1989.