Salvador Dalí Domenech, painter and sculptor. Born on May 11, 1904 at 8:45 am in the town of Figueres , Girona.
Baptized as Salvador, Domingo, Felipe, Jacinto Dalí, son of Salvador Dalí i Cusí and Felipa Doménech.
He was born nine months and ten exact days after buried a first Salvador Dalí, his brother, of whom he wrote that they looked "like two drops of water." His eldest brother died of meningitis when he was only seven years old. The name they gave him, Salvador, is the same as his dead brother's.
He was a capricious, pampered and spoiled child whose parents turned affection and attentions in a somewhat compulsive way due to the early death of his brother. His childhood is characterized by anger issues against his parents and cruel acts against his schoolmates.
During a long convalescence spent in El Molí de la Torre , a farm near Figueres owned by the remarkable Pichot family, Dalí discovered the painting. There he made, with an absolute technical ignorance, his first pictures (oils and watercolors) of which no trace remains, but which impressed those who had occasion to see them. It was the Pichot who advised Dalí to follow learning courses. The sick child is the title of his first self-portrait, performed at the age of 10. Shortly after he began his first course of drawing with Juan Núñez from whom he learned the use of chiaroscuro and also introduced him in the techniques of engraving. The works of Dalí are known by an important treatment of the details, to which it gives much light and color.
His mother died in 1921 of breast cancer. Dali was only 16 years old and was seriously affected by the death of his mother.
He was admitted to the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid ) in 1921, from which he was expelled, accused of anarchist subversion ; was arrested and spent a short period in prison , in Girona (1923). His first solo exhibition in Barcelona was celebrated in November of 1925. After being readmitted, he was definitively expelled in 1926 because of his eccentricity . he noted that when an examination he was asked to speak about Rafael , Dalí responded to the court.
"It is impossible to talk about that subject before the three teachers, because I know a lot more about Rafael that all of you gathered"
the following year he met Picasso in Paris , and joined the surrealist group in the Parisian quarter of Montparnasse. Despite being one of the most famous surrealist artists of all time, he was expelled from the official surrealist society in 1934. In London , Stefan Zweig introduced him to Sigmund Freud . A friend of Luis Buñuel and Federico García Lorca, whom he met in Madrid in 1923. José Bello said that when Dalí arrived at the Student Residence, at the age of 18, "he was a person with a shyness ." With Buñuel he performed the staging of " An Andalusian dog " and collaborated, in a second stage, in L'age d'or . Instead, Garcia Lorca had a very intimate friendship, as evidenced by the tight correspondence between 1925 and 1936. Until then, Dalí had not loved anyone in this way.
During his military service (1927) Dalí realizes Cinderellas , his first work "Dalinian"in which his ghost memories flourished. In his years in Paris, he acquired the characteristics of surrealism in 1930. His works in this period were inspired by Freud's theories.
He met Helena Diakonova in 1929, better known as Gala , daughter of a Russian lawyer and companion of the surrealist poet Paul Eluard. He saw her for the first time on the terrace of the hotel Miramar in Cadaqués, with her husband. They stayed the next morning, on the beach. Dalí decided to prepare for the encounter in a totally symbolic way. He rolled up his clothes to make the tan stand out. He wore a necklace of pearls and a red geranium on his ear. He was injured by shaving his armpit and smeared the body with his own blood, to which he added a mixture of fish tail, goat's dung and oil. The marriage to Gala offends his family, who disapproves of being a mother and 10 years older than Dalí, who was disinherited by his father. Eluard was one of the witnesses at his wedding.
A few months later, deeply in love, they are going to live together. From that moment. Gala will be for Dalí a lover, friend, muse and model (she appears for the first time in his profile, in "The Great Masturbator ", 1929.
In 1932 Dalí presents his work The Persistence of Memory , in the first great surrealist retrospective to be held in New York : it is the beginning of his spectacular success. From 1936 he leaves his residence in Catalonia with Gala. from 1940 to 1948, Dalí lived in the United States . there he made his last works, most of them religious aspect, as the Crucifixion or the last supper (1955, National Gallery, Washington ).
Dalí was the most popular representative of surrealism and is recognized worldwide for his work full of dream images. The artist left a mark in the world of illustration and engraving , he made a remarkable amount of sculptures and jewels , he also left his work in the scenic world through the creation of ballets , sets and costumes for operas ; without forgetting their contributions, of decisive importance, in the world of design, advertising and cinema . For the film "Remember" by Alfred Hitchcock , the artist designed the sets .
On 1 April 1970 he announced the creation of a museum in Figueres , which opened four years later. In December of 1979 a first great anthological exhibition was inaugurated in the center Georges Pompídou of Paris . To the few. days were made public disagreements with Gala and began the conflict of copyright and counterfeiting. In the art community, he was known for his love of making money. Because of this he was derisively called " Avida Dollars " because of his greed.
He wrote an autobiographical book like The secret life of Salvador Dalí .
He married Gala, this time by Catholic terms, in Sant Martí Vell, Gerona, on August 8, 1958. The couple contracted civil marriage in the city of Paris in 1934.
On January 23, 1989, he died at the hospital in Figueres at the age of 84 as a result of cardiac arrest, after suffering a long agony. His body was embalmed and buried in a tomb under the geodesic dome that dominates his museum in the same locality.
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