Salvador Dali Biography - life, family, childhood, parents, story, wife, school, son, information, born, house
Salvador Dali Biography
Figueras, Spain
Spanish painter and artist
The Spanish painter Salvador Dali was one of the best-known surrealist       artists (artists who seek to express the contents of the unconscious       mind). Blessed with an enormous talent for drawing, he painted his dreams       and bizarre moods in a precise way.
Early life
Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904, near Barcelona, Spain. He was         the son of Salvador and Felipa Dome (Domenech) Dali. His father was a         notary (one who witnesses the signing of important documents). According         to Dali's autobiography (the story of his own life), his         childhood was filled with fits of anger against his parents and         classmates and he received cruel treatment from them in response. He was         an intelligent child, producing advanced drawings at an early age.
Dali attended the Colegio de los Hermanos Maristas and the Instituto in         Figueras, Spain. By 1921 he convinced his father that he could make a         living as an artist and was allowed to go to Madrid, Spain, to study         painting. He was strongly influenced by the dreamlike works of the         Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978). He also         experimented with cubism (a type of art in which objects are viewed in         terms of geometry—the science of points, lines, and surfaces). He         was briefly imprisoned for political activities against the government         and was finally thrown out of art school in 1925.
Association with surrealist movement
Dali's own style eventually began to show itself: he would draw,         in an extremely precise manner, the strange subjects of his dream world.         Each object, while carefully drawn, existed in strange contrast to other         objects and was contained in a space that often appeared to tilt sharply         upward. He applied bright colors
Salvador Dali.
AP/Wide World Photos
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to small objects set off against large patches of dull color. His         personal style showed a number of influences, strongest among which was         his contact with surrealism. The surrealists believed in artistic and         political freedom to help free the imagination. Dali's first         contact with the movement was through seeing paintings; he then met         other surrealist artists when he visited Paris, France, in 1928. Dali         created some of his finest paintings in 1929.
In the early 1930s many of the surrealists began to break away from the         movement, feeling that direct political action had to come before any         artistic revolutions. Dali put forth his "Paranoic-Critical         method" as a way to avoid having to politically conquer the         world. He felt that by using his own vision to color reality to his         liking it would become unnecessary to actually change the world. The         Paranoic-Critical method meant that Dali had trained himself to possess         the power to look at one object and "see" another. This         did not apply only to painting; it meant that Dali could take a myth         that was interpreted a certain way and impose upon it his own personal         ideas.
A key event in Dali's life during this time was meeting his wife,         Gala, who was at that time married to another surrealist. She became his         main influence, both in his personal life and in many of his paintings.         Toward the end of the 1930s, Dali's exaggerated view of himself         began to annoy others. André Breton (1896–1966), a French         poet and critic who was a leading surrealist, angrily expelled Dali from         the surrealist movement. Dali continued to be very successful in         painting as well as in writing, stage design, and films, but his         seriousness as an artist began to be questioned. He took a strong stand         against abstract (unrealistic) art and began to paint Catholic subjects         in the same tight style that had previously described his personal         nightmares.
Later years
In 1974 Dali broke with English business manager Peter Moore and had the         rights to his art sold out from under him by other business managers,         leaving him with none of the profits. In 1980 a man named A. Reynolds         Morse of Cleveland, Ohio, set up an organization called Friends to Save         Dali. Dali was said to have been cheated out of much of his wealth, and         the goal of the foundation was to put him back on solid financial         (relating to money) ground.
In 1983 Dali exhibited many of his works at the Museum of Contemporary         Art in Madrid. This show made him hugely famous in Spain and brought him         further into favor with the Spanish royal family and major collectors         around the world. After 1984 Dali was confined to a wheelchair after         suffering injuries in a house fire.
Dali died on January 23, 1989, in Figueras, Spain. He was remembered as         the subject of much controversy (dispute), although in his last years,         the controversy had more to do with his associates and their dealings         than with Dali himself.
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