Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres, Gerona, on May 11, 1904. He was one of the most important surrealistic visual artists.
Although a part of the immense prestige and popularity he enjoyed during his lifetime was due to his eccentricities and peculiar figure, Salvador Dalí breathed new life into European surrealism and became its most famous representative. He developed a method he called “critical-paranoid” that involved various subjective forms of association of ideas and images. His striking compositions revealed a masterful technical precision in a very personal dream and a symbolic universe that was as clear and bright as it was deeply disturbing and unsettling.
He dedicated himself to various activities such as film, sculpture, and photography, but undoubtedly stood out as a painter. His work, like his eccentric figure, became incorporated into the imagery of Western culture.
In 1922, Dalí moved to Madrid, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. He became friends with the poet Federico García Lorca and filmmaker Luis Buñuel.
He was expelled from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1926 after declaring that no one there was competent enough to evaluate him. That same year, he traveled to Paris where he met Picasso and Max Ernst, but it was the discovery of Freud’s theories and the metaphysical painters such as Giorgio de Chirico that would make a big difference in his future works.
In 1929, he collaborated with Luis Buñuel on the short film “Un Chien Andalou” and met his muse and future wife, Gala Éluard (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, a Russian immigrant, at the time married to poet Paul Éluard).
Also in 1929, Dalí held important exhibitions and joined the surrealist group in the Parisian neighborhood of Montparnasse.
He was expelled by the members of the surrealist group in 1939 for political reasons, as Marxism was the preferred doctrine in the movement, and Dalí declared himself an “anarcho-monarchist”. Dalí responded to his expulsion by declaring, “I am surrealism”.
At the beginning of World War II, Dalí and Gala moved to the United States, where they lived for eight years. In 1942, Dalí published his autobiography “The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí”.
In 1960, the painter began working on the Gala Salvador Dalí Theater-M