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Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueras, a small town near Barcelona, Spain. His artistic talent was recognized at an early age, and he held his very first exhibition of his work when he was just fourteen years old. Dali loved his mother, as she had had an aura of saintly goodness around her. The artist, on the other hand, hated his father, and the two often fought for the woman's attention as well as for her affection.
In February of 1921, Salvador Dali's mother passed away, and so did the battle between her son and her husband. The two still had no reason to get along, though, and the young man kept busy with his life as an artist. Eight months later, he was accepted at the San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid.
In 1923, Dali was booted out of the Academy for a year because he persistently criticized his teachers. Undaunted, Dali continued on, and he showed off his first solo exhibition at the Dalmau gallery in Barcelona in 1925.
For the next couple of years, the artist experimented with different styles of painting. He met and studied Picasso in Paris, and he experimented with Impressionalism, Pointillism, and Surrealism. During this time, in 1926, Salvador Dali was terminated from the Academy.
In 1929, Dali became an official member of the Surrealists. Surrealists wanted to create shocking works. They also wanted to confuse normal situations. It was an artistic movement that tried to explain the workings of the subconscious. Surrealists are said to try and defy good reason and common sense. An artist by the name of Andre Breton, who published "The Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924, is credited for founding the Surrealist art form. Other Surrealists such as Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Pierre Roy, and Paul Delvaux joined Dali, but he was considered by many to have been the master of the art.
In addition to his childhood, his dreams, and a study of his subconscious, Dali soon added Sigmund Freud's ideas to his paintings. From Freud's influence, came Salvador Dali's own creation: a form of painting called "Paranoic-Critical". This form was used in order to create a reality from mental thoughts. Dali continued to work on Surrealist paintings, and he showed his first exhibit in 1932.
A few years later, he painted one of his most controversial works called, "Metamorphosis of Narcissus." Dali went on to paint many more pictures of this nature, and his works included, "The Persistence of Memory," "Soft Construction with Baked Beans," and "Autumn Cannibalism." His paintings were said to be detailed and full of symbolism. Dali was also known as a flamboyant painter because his creations were considered to be on the bizarre side.
Although Salvador Dali embraced Andre Breton's Surrealistic form, he often quarreled with Breton and other members of the club over the content of his paintings and his right-wing views. Dali's goal was to bring the inner subconscious world into reality. Ultimately, he was removed from the club in 1934.
Dali went on painting and creating his works, and he remained a popular, yet controversial Surrealist until around the time that World War II broke out. At that time, Dali was living in California, and he decided to change his lifestyle a bit. Dali had had a love of Classicism for quite a long time, and he felt it was time for him to focus on mythological as well as religious topics. His works were still considered to be bizarre and grotesque, but now he chose to paint different subjects. One example of a classical painting was "The Madonna of Port Lligat."
In the 1940's, Dali sketched cartoons for Walt Disney, the famed creator of Mickey Mouse, and he also did some work for Alfred Hitchcock. The 1950's found him busy publishing "The Mystical Manifesto," and "The Tragic Myth of Millet's Angelus." Salvador Dali also published the "Diary of a Genius," a little more than a decade later.
Finally, in 1983, when Surrealist painter Salvador Dali was seventy-nine years old, he created his last painting, which was called "The Swallows Tail." He died six years later, in 1989, of a heart attack, while living in the Torre Galatea.
While Dali is gone, he is certainly not forgotten, as his works are still displayed in museums around the world. It can be said that he was a complex person, and this can be seen in his menagerie of works. Some of his paintings are easier to understand than others, while others are grotesque and definitely of a paranoiac design all his own.
Throughout Salvador Dali's long career, he was considered to be a madman by many people who did not appreciate his Surrealist art. But you can just visit one or more of the Internet sites that displays pictures of Dali's paintings and decide for yourself.
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