Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí was a famous surrealist painter in the early 20th century. His paintings used unexpected, sometimes nonsensical images to show people that there was more to the human mind than simple realism. Famous for his impressively long mustache, Dalí impressed the world with his creativity, unique style, and thought-provoking imagery.

Early Drawing

Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres, Spain in 1904. At an early age, he expressed some of the eccentricities and emotional outbursts that would later make him famous. Because of his unusual personality, Dalí had a difficult relationship with his parents; his mother was very affectionate and indulgent towards his passions and outbursts, but his father was extremely strict and often acted cruelly towards his son.

Even so, both his parents recognized artistic talent in their young son. He spent hours drawing detailed pictures. They decided to build Dalí a small art studio next to their summer house on the coast of Spain, and when he was twelve they sent him to art school.

Art Schools

Dalí was not a serious student while attending art school, although his drawing continued to improve. He enjoyed standing out from his peers, so he grew his hair long and intentionally wore the strangest clothes he could find. After his first year at art school, Dalí discovered a love for painting. Later, his father arranged a private show of some of Dalí’s work, and by 1919 the young artist opened his first public exhibition in Figueres, Spain. 

Two years later Dalí’s mother died of breast cancer, and the tragedy devastated him. He had been close with his mother and counted on her for emotional support. After her death, the problems between Dalí and his father increased and would remain this way for the rest of his life.

In 1922, Dalí decided to move to Madrid, the capital city of Spain, to attend the arts academy, Academia de San Fernando. Living in the student housing on campus, he expressed his flair for the unusual more than ever before. He grew sideburns and wore dramatic coats and stockings. This love for the strange and unusual bled into his artwork; he experimented with many styles of art, including Cubism and Dada, a countercultural art movement that said wars were caused by peoples’ reliance on logic, reason, and money.

Dalí butted heads with the school administration a few times, which earned him a suspension and a brief time in jail. Finally, just before he could graduate in 1926, Dalí was permanently expelled for claiming the school did not have any professors qualified enough to give him final grades.

Surrealism

Not discouraged, Dalí traveled back and forth to Paris, France several times in the next few years. He met with famous artists such as Pablo Picasso. When Dalí met painter Joan Miró in 1929, he was introduced to the style of painting he would use for the rest of his career: Surrealism.

Surrealism was already a movement in the international art community that believed art should unleash the creative power of each person’s mind. The people behind the movement believed that images should not be restricted to what we see in the real world. Dalí used surrealist painting to record many of the events and images he saw in dreams, especially when those images did not “make sense.” For example, his most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory, shows clocks melting on a soft, beach landscape and being eaten by ants. Dalí, unlike some other surrealist artists, liked to use painting to show others the unusual reality inside his head.

Dalí found his home in the surrealist community in Paris. As he continued painting he also partnered with some filmmakers to create art for several movies. Dalí’s artwork appeared in a long dream sequence in “Spellbound,” a movie by the famous Hollywood director, Alfred Hitchcock.

As he grew more famous for his artwork (rich clients around Paris frequently purchased his paintings), he was equally well known for his eccentric personality. He grew an extremely long mustache that became iconic for him. He walked around town wearing a cape and carrying a walking stick. He attended events in outlandish costumes –he once gave an important lecture while wearing a wetsuit and walking two Russian wolfhounds.

Later Career and Museum

For reasons that still remain disputed, Dalí was officially kicked out of the surrealist group in 1934. The fight may have happened because of his overwhelming personality, differing political views, or personal tensions. He and his wife, Gala, moved to the United States for several years, where Dalí transitioned from surrealism to classical art. The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art held a special exhibition of his work.

After he moved back to Europe in 1948 he spent the next 15 years working on 19 large canvasses that combined classical attention to detail with surrealist images and subject matter. He focused on historical and religious themes. After he finished those he began rebuilding the old Municipal Theater of Figueres, the place of Dalí’s first-ever art show in Spain. He transformed it into a personal museum; the architecture and artwork inside captured his surrealist tendencies and themes. The museum houses a broad range of Dalí’s work, from his earliest paintings to later pieces he made just for the museum. 

Dalí’s career came to an end when he began suffering from a disease that limited his hand movements. After his wife, Gala, died, he became very depressed, and later he died of heart failure in 1989.

Dalí was one of the most influential surrealist painters in history. He saw himself as a purer surrealist than most of the other artists in the movement in Paris, and countless modern artists have said Dalí is a big inspiration for them. His incredible talent and his unique, eccentric personality are some of the most well-remembered details in art history.