Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí de Púbol, known as Salvador Dalí, was born on 11 May 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, close to the French border. He became one of the most recognizable Spanish surrealist artists of the twentieth century, known for technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and images that were often striking, bizarre, and dreamlike. His life spanned years of avant-garde experiment, the Spanish Civil War, exile and commercial success in the United States, and a return to Spain after the Second World War.

Dalí’s childhood carried both encouragement and disturbance. His father, a middle-class lawyer and notary, was strict, while his mother encouraged his artistic work. Before Dalí was born, an older brother also named Salvador had died of gastroenteritis, and Dalí later said the brother haunted his imagination; images of him returned in works such as Portrait of My Dead Brother in 1963. Dalí also had a younger sister, Anna Maria, whom he painted 12 times between 1923 and 1926. As a boy he attended the Municipal Drawing School at Figueres, discovered modern painting during a family trip to Cadaqués, and had his first public exhibition at the Municipal Theatre in Figueres in 1918.

In 1922, Dalí moved to Madrid to study at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and lived at the Residencia de Estudiantes. There he became close to Pepín Bello, Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, and others linked to the Madrid avant-garde group Ultra. His friendship with Lorca was one of his most emotionally intense relationships until Lorca’s death at the hands of Nationalist forces in 1936. Dalí also began regular visits to the Prado Museum, where he studied the old masters with pencil in hand. At the same time, he absorbed Cubism, Dada, Futurism, Freud, Lautréamont, Impressionism, and Renaissance art.

By the late 1920s, Dalí had moved closer to Surrealism. He joined the Surrealist group in 1929 and soon became one of its leading figures. His best-known painting, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931. Dalí’s work ranged across painting, sculpture, film, graphic arts, animation, fashion, and photography, sometimes in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays, and criticism. Dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science, and his closest personal relationships became major subjects in his art and writing.

Dalí lived in France during the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939, then left for the United States in 1940, where he achieved commercial success. He returned to Spain in 1948, announced his return to the Catholic faith, and developed a style he called “nuclear mysticism,” shaped by classicism, mysticism, and recent scientific developments. His eccentric public behavior often drew as much notice as his art, and his support for the Francoist regime, commercial activity, and some late works brought controversy. Yet the range of his output, from strange images to critical prose, still gives readers sharp access to a mind drawn to dreams, belief, science, and spectacle.