Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres, Gerona, on May 11, 1904. He was one of the most important surrealist plastic artists.

Although part of the immense prestige and popularity he enjoyed during his life was due to his eccentricities and peculiar figure, Salvador Dalí gave new life to European surrealism and became its best-known representative; He developed a method that he called "critical-paranoid", which involved various subjective forms of associations of ideas and images. His striking compositions revealed masterful technical precision in a very personal dream and symbolic universe that is as clear and brilliant as it is deeply unsettling and disturbing.

He dedicated himself to various activities such as cinema, sculpture and photography, but he undoubtedly stood out as a painter, with his work, like his eccentric figure, becoming embedded in the imagination of Western culture.

In 1922, Dalí he goes to live in Madrid, where he studies at the San Fernando Academy of Arts. He became friends with the poet Federico García Lorca and the filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

É He was expelled from the Academy of Arts in 1926, after declaring that no one there was competent enough to evaluate him. That same year he traveled to Paris where he met Picasso and Max Ernst, but it was the discovery of Freud's theories and metaphysical painters such as Giorgio de Chiririco that would make a big difference in his future work.

In 1929 he collaborated with Luis Buñuel in the short film "Un Chien Andalou" and met his muse and future wife, Gala Éluard (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, a Russian immigrant, at the time married to the poet Paul Éluard).

Still in 1929, Dalí holds important exhibitions and joins the surrealist group in the Parisian neighborhood of Montparnasse.

É expelled by members of the surrealist group in 1939, for political reasons, already that Marxism was the preferred doctrine in the movement and Dalí declared himself "anarcho-monarchical". Dalí responded to the question; his expulsion declaring: "Surrealism is me."

At the beginning of the Second World War, Dalí and Gala move to the United States, where they lived for eight years. In 1942, Dalí publishes his autobiography "The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí".

In 1960, the painter began working at the Teatro-Museum Gala Salvador Dalí, in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. It was the biggest project of his entire career and his main focus until his death. 1974. 

The two largest collections of works by Dalí are the Salvador Dalí in Saint Petersbourg, Florida, United States, and the Gala Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum, in Figueres, Spain.

Dali died in the city of Figueres, on January 23, 1989.