Salvador Dalí

1. Biography

1.1. Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in the town of Figueres, Spain. Figueres is located near to France. Dali spent his boyhood in Figueres and at the family’s fishing village of Cadaques and there his parents did their first studio. Dali went to the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. He became internationally known when three of his paintings, including The Basket of Bread, were shown in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928. That year he joined the surrealists, led by former Dadaist Andre Breton. At those days he met Gala Eluard, she became Dali’s lover, muse, business manager, and chief inspiration. It became a leader of the Surrealist Movement. As the war approached, the apolitical Dali clashed with the Surrealists and was “expelled” from the surrealist group during a “trial” in 1934. He was moving into a new type of painting with science and religion. Dali and his wife escaped from Europe during World War II, spending 1940-48 in the United States. In these years The Museum of Modern Art in New York gave him his first major retrospective exhibit in 1941. As Dali moved away from Surrealism and into his classic period, he began his series large canvases, many concerning scientific, historical or religious themes. In 1974, Dali opened the Teatro Museo in his native town. This was followed by retrospectives in Paris and London at the end of the decade. His wife died in 1982, there his health began to fail. Salvador Dali died on January 23, 1989 in Figueres from heart failure.

2. Surrealist movement

2.1. A literary and art movement, that is based on expressing the imagination, like in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention.

3. Interwar period

3.1. His first early recognition was in 1925 in Barcelona. This was with a one man show. During this inter war period Dalí became internationally famous because of his paintings and in 1929 he became part of the surrealist movement. Then he became one of the leaders of this movement and has now-days the better surrealist paintings. He was expelled from this movement in 1934 because he had different political point of vie with one of the leaders of the surrealist movement. It was good for him this inter war period because it made hi advance a lot with the art and also his paintings became famous.

4. Important works