Biography

Spanish (1904-1989)

Salvador Dali, perhaps the most well known artist of the Surrealist movement, possessed a personality as exuberant and eccentric as many of his masterpieces. Born in Figueras, Spain, in 1904, Dali displayed an artistic talent and passion at an early age. As a young man, he attended the San Fernando Academy in Madrid, where he was expelled twice for questioning the competence of his instructors. During these early years, Dali’s style was Impressionist and then Cubist. But he eventually found his true voice in Surrealism, a style marked by the use of fantastical visual imagery from the subconscious, aiming to liberate the mind and transcend everyday reality. Dali himself said of his work, “I simply transcribe my visions even the most wild and the most passing, everything that passes through my head, personal, unique, mysterious, incomprehensible.”

In 1929, Dali met his true love and muse, Gala. Their life together spanned the next 50 years, through which she served as not only his constant companion, but also the inspiration and model for many of his works. Though best known for his paintings, Dali was a highly creative individual and experimented with many forms of expression in his lifetime, including writing, jewelry creation, illustrating, decorating, and filmmaking. However, Dali’s persona itself may have been his greatest form of expression. A master of self-promotion, he was never afraid of declaring himself the greatest artist ever to live. Stories of his unusual behavior, such as delivering a lecture in a diving suit to represent his work as a dive into the unconscious or making public appearances in a Rolls Royce filled with cauliflower, served only to heighten the mystique of the man and his artwork. Sadly, the last few years of Dali’s life were marked by tragedies.

In 1980, Dali developed uncontrollable tremors that greatly affected his ability to work. This, combined with the death of his beloved Gala in 1982, caused Dali a great depression. He painted his last canvas, The Swallow’s Tail, in 1983. After spending the last few years of his life living as a recluse in his own museum, Dali died in 1989.

• Banksy
• Jean-Michel Basquiat
• Alexander Calder
• Marc Chagall
• Salvador Dali

• Jim Dine
• Helen Frankenthaler
• Keith Haring
• Robert Indiana
• Jasper Johns

• William John Kennedy
• Roy Lichtenstein
• John Matos (CRASH)
• Joan Miro
• Henry Moore

• Robert Motherwell
• Marcel Mouly
• Pablo Picasso
• Robert Rauschenberg
• James Rosenquist

• Andy Warhol
• Russell Young