Salvador Dalì (Figueres 1904-1989)

He was born in 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia, and became one of the most famous Surrealist painters of the 20th century. From an early age he showed exceptional artistic talent and, encouraged by his family, studied at an art school and later enrolled at the San Fernando Academy in Madrid. In 1926 he was expelled from the Academy and the following year moved to Paris, where he met the artist Pablo Picasso and created numerous works inspired by the latter's painting. During the 1920s, Dali made his first Surrealist paintings, and throughout the following decade he collaborated with various Surrealist publications illustrating the works of writers and poets of the eponymous movement. His distinctive style was characterized by dreamlike imagery and he created iconic works such as “The Persistence of Memory” (1931), which was first exhibited in the New York gallery of art dealer Julian Levy in 1933 during his first solo show. During World War II, Dali moved to the United States with his wife. During this period, in addition to painting, he devoted himself to theater production and wrote books, cementing his reputation as one of the great protagonists of European art. In 1941, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a significant retrospective of his work, which subsequently toured the United States as a traveling exhibition. In 1942 he published his autobiography, “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali,” and continued to exhibit at M. Knoedler and Co. in New York. Dali returned to Europe in 1948 and settled in Port Lligat, Spain, where he began painting works with religious themes. In the last years of his life, the artist moved toward a new style called “nuclear mysticism,” influenced by the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and his renewed faith in Catholicism.