Salvador Dalí

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènec was born on the morning of 11^th May 1904 in Figueres, Spain, where he spent his boyhood. The young Dalí attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. The early recognition of Dalí’s talent came with his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1925. He became internationally known when three of his paintings, including The Basket of Bread, were shown in the 3rd annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928. During the following year Dalí held his first one-man show in Paris. He also joined the surrealists, who were led by André Breton. In the same year Dalí met Gala Eluard when she visited him in Cadaques with her husband, the poet Paul Eluard. She became Dalí’s lover, muse, business manager and chief inspiration. As the war began, the apolitical Dalí clashed with the Surrealists and was expelled from the surrealist group during a trial in 1934. However, he did exhibit works in international surrealist exhibitions throughout the decade but from 1940 Dalí moved into a new type of painting with a preoccupation with science and religion. He and Gala escaped from Europe during the Second World War and from 1940 to 1948 they spent their lives in the United States. The Museum of Modern Art in New York gave Dalí his first major retrospective exhibit in 1941. This was followed in 1942 by the publication of Dalí’s autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. In 1974, he opened the Teatro Museo in Figueres, Spain. This was followed by retrospectives in Paris and London at the end of the decade. After the death of his wife in 1982, Dalí’s health began to fail. It deteriorated further after he was burned in a fire in his home in Pubol in 1984. He died on 23^rd January in 1989 in Figueres because of heart failure with respiratory complications. As artist, Salvador Dalí was not limited to a particular style or media. The body of his work, from early impressionist paintings through his transitional surrealist works and into his classical period, reveals a constant growing and evolving artist. Dalí worked in all media, leaving behind a wealth of oils, watercolours, drawings, graphics, and sculptures, films, photographs, performance pieces, jewels and objects of all descriptions.