Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali (b.1904-d.1989) was eccentric Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. He was born in the small town of Figueres, Spain. Dali spent his boyhood in Figueres and at the family's summer home in the coastal fishing village of Cadaques where his parents built his first studio. The young Salvador Dali drew from an early age and was encouraged by his mother. She died of cancer when the artist was just 16 though, and his father remarried the sister of his mother.

In 1922 Salvador Dali moved to Madrid to study painting at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts. Here he began to develop a reputation as an eccentric. Dali did not complete his final exams, and commented that those judging his work were not competent enough to grade him. Early recognition of Dali's talent came with his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1925. He became internationally known when three of his paintings, were shown in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928.

In 1929 Salvador Dali moved to Paris, France to pursue his career. In Paris he met his wife Helena Diakonova "Gala", a Russian immigrant that was more than 10 years older than him and already married to poet Paul Eluard. She became Dali's lover, muse, business manager, and chief inspiration. The couple were married in 1934 and she remained a major part of Dali's life up until his death. In Paris Dali met Pablo Picasso for the first time and also became involved with Andre Breton and the Surrealist art movement. Around this time he created surreal works that would come to represent what Surrealism was to many people, with works like The Great Masturbator and the famous The Persistence of Memory, one of the best-known surrealist works.

Dali and Gala escaped from Europe in 1940 and moved to United States . These were very important years for the artist. The Museum of Modern Art in New York gave Dali his first major retrospective exhibit in 1941. This was followed in 1942 by the publication of Dali's autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. In 1955 he returned to Spain and in old age became a recluse. In 1974, Dali opened the Teatro Museo in Figueres, Spain. This was followed by retrospectives in Paris and London at the end of the decade. In 1982 his beloved wife and companion Gala died. Dali was suffering his own problems battling with the debilitating condition of palsy. He then moved into the castle he bought for Gala in Pubol until he was injured when a fire broke out in 1984. Two years later, a pace-maker was implanted. Much of this part of his life was spent in seclusion, first in Pubol and later in his apartments at Torre Galatea, adjacent to the Teatro Museo. Salvador Dali died on January 23, 1989 in Figueres from heart problems.

Dali's name is synonymous with the Surrealist art movement. Dali was a prolific artist, creating more than 1500 paintings during his life time and many works in other mediums, including prints, drawings, sculpture, book illustration, and theater set designs.