Salvador
Dalí i Domènech
Spain
(1904 - 1989)
The son
of a prestigious notary public of Figueres, Salvador Dalí devoted
himself to drawing and painting from a very early age, and in 1922 he
commenced Fine Art studies in Madrid. During his stay at the Residencia
de Estudiantes he struck up a great friendship with the poet Federico
García Lorca and the film-maker Luis Buñuel, with whom
he carried out several avant-garde artistic projects.
Following
his studies in Madrid and participation in the renovating artistic debates
of the 1920s in Catalonia, Salvador Dalí left for Paris and joined
the Surrealist group of painters and sculptors. Some of the works that
were to make him one of the greatest representatives of Surrealism -
such as The Great Masturbator, The Spectre of Sex Appeal, The
Lugubrious Game and The Persistence of Memory (Soft Watches) - date
from this period. In 1929 he met the young Russian girl Helena Diakonova,
known under the nickname of Gala, who would from that time on become
his model and girlfriend.
Coinciding
with the start of the Second World War, Salvador Dalí and Gala
settled for a few years in the United States, where his realistic yet
dreamlike style of painting met with considerable success. He wrote
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí and also worked for cinema and
ballet.
During the 1970s Salvador Dalí created and inaugurated the Dalí
Theatre-Museum in Figueres, which houses a large collection of
his works, from his earliest days and his Surrealist creations through
to the works he produced in the last years of his life. In
1983 he created the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation as the institution
that was to manage, protect and promote his artistic and intellectual
legacy.
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Dalí
