Salvador Felice Jacinto Dali was born on May 11th 1904 in Figueres, a small town in Cataluña, Spain, where nowadays the “Dali Museum” can be found.
In 1922 the artist enrolled at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid: during this time, he was influenced by different types of art, for example Metaphysical painting and Cubism. In between 1926 and 1929, Dali made several trips to Paris, where he met very important artists like Picasso, Magritte, Mirò and the poet Paul Eluard: it was in this period that he was introduced to Surrealism, movement of which he became one of the greatest exponents.
One of the most important events of his life was the meeting with Gala, who became his lover, his wife and his bigger inspiration. He wrote: “Amo a Gala más que a mi madre, más que a mi padre, más que a Picasso e incluso más que al dinero” (I love Gala more than my mother, more than my father, more than Picasso and even more than money). His art has many recurring symbols, such as the clocks, the ants, the eggs, or the elephants, protagonists of many of his sculptures.
Dali died in 1989 at the age of 84.
Salvador Dalí is among the most versatile and prolific artists of the 20th century and the most famous Surrealist. Though chiefly remembered for his painterly output, in the course of his long career he successfully turned to sculpture, printmaking, fashion, advertising, writing, and, perhaps most famously, filmmaking in his collaborations with Luis Buñuel and Alfred Hitchcock. Dalí was renowned for his flamboyant personality and role of mischievous provocateur as much as for his undeniable technical virtuosity. In his early use of organic morphology, his work bears the stamp of fellow Spaniards Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. His paintings also evince a fascination for Classical and Renaissance art, clearly visible through his hyper-realistic style and religious symbolism of his later work.