Salvador Dali

Spain • Born in: 1904

Salvador Dalí, in full Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domenech, was born May 11, 1904, in Figueras, Spain, and died on January 23, 1989. This Spanish surrealist painter and printmaker was known for his explorations of subconscious imagery.

As an art student in Madrid and Barcelona, Dalí absorbed a number of artistic styles and displayed unusual technical dexterity as a painter. It was not until the late 1920s that two events brought about the development of his mature artistic style. First, his discovery of Sigmund Freud's writings on the erotic significance of subconscious imagery. Second, his affiliation with the Paris Surrealists, a group of artists and writers who sought to establish a “greater reality" of the human subconscious over reason. To evoke images from his subconscious mind, Dalí partook in self-induced hallucinatory states, a process he described as “paranoiac-critical".

Upon Dalí establishing this method, his painting style matured at an extraordinary rate. Thanks to Rene Magritte and Joan Miró, from 1929 to 1937, Dalí had produced the artworks that had earned him the title of the world's best-known Surrealist artist. He depicted a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed, deformed, or otherwise metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational manner.

The famous artist dabbled in other media as well. Alongside Spanish director Luis Buñuel, Dalí made two Surrealist films—Un Chien Andalou (1928; An Andalusian Dog) and L'Âge d'Or (1930; The Golden Age)—that are similarly filled with grotesque but highly suggestive images. Dalí also wrote books; perhaps the most interesting and revealing being The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942-44).

By the late 1930s, Dalí switched to painting in a more academic style under the influence of the Renaissance painter Raphael. By doing so, he was consequently expelled from the Surrealist movement. Thereafter, he spent much of his time designing theatre sets, fashionable shop interiors, jewelry, as well as exhibiting his genius for flamboyant self-promotional stunts in the United States, where he lived from 1940 to 1955.

From 1950 to 1970, Dalí painted many works with religious themes, although he continued to explore erotic subjects, childhood memories, and themes surrounding his wife, Gala. Despite their technical accomplishments, Dalí's later paintings are not as highly regarded as his earlier works.