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Salvador Dali
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Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalà I Domenech was born on 11 May, 1904, and spent his childhood in the town of Figueres, Spain. Dalà also frequently visited his family’s summer home in Cadaques where he had a studio built. Later, he moved to Port Lligat with his wife Gala, and many of his paintings demonstrate his love for her and this area of Spain.
Dalà began his artistic career at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid,...
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Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalà I Domenech was born on 11 May, 1904, and spent his childhood in the town of Figueres, Spain. Dalà also frequently visited his family’s summer home in Cadaques where he had a studio built. Later, he moved to Port Lligat with his wife Gala, and many of his paintings demonstrate his love for her and this area of Spain.
Dalà began his artistic career at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he experimented with what he learnt about Cubism and Dadaism. Although he was expelled from the school in 1926, he had achieved popularity, following his first one-man exhibition in Barcelona the year before.
A few years later, the artist’s paintings were exhibited in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928, and then in a solo exhibition in Paris in 1929, the same year that he and his friend, the director Luis Buñuel, collaborated on the short film ‘Un Chien Andalou’. It was in Paris that Dalà met Gala Eluard, then wife of the surrealist poet Paul Eluard, who would become his main muse, featuring in several of his works, and then his wife in 1934.
Both in Spain and France, Dalà was exposed to and deeply influenced by Surrealism, pioneered by the former Dadaist artist Andre Breton. One of his earliest and most famous Surrealist works is the 1931 canvas, The Persistence of Memory. Soon after that he came to be regarded as one of the leaders of the Surrealist movement and was celebrated for his ‘paranoic-critical method’ of tapping the subconscious in his creative process. However, following political disagreements with Breton and the group and a mock ‘trial’, he was expelled from it in 1934.
Following his engagement with Surrealism, Dalà produced several works reflecting a new preoccupation with science and religion, particularly Catholicism, in the 1940s, a phase that came to be known as his ‘classic’ period. Among the best known paintings from this period are The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946), The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955), in the collection of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1959).
During the Second World War, Dalà and Gala were forced to leave Europe, and moved to America, where the dealer Julian Levy had already shown his work in the mid-1930s. The artist was warmly welcomed in the United States, and his eight years there marked a significant period in his career. In 1941, the Museum of Modern Art in New York held the first major retrospective of the artist’s work, and in 1942, DalÃ's autobiography, titled The Secret Life of Salvador DalÃ, was published. Amongst other projects, Dalà also provided concepts and artwork for a sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s movie ‘Spellbound’. In 1949, Dalà moved back to Catalonia in Spain.
In 1959, the artist’s early works were included with those of Joan Miró, Enrique Tabara and Eugenio Granell in the landmark exhibition ‘Homage to Surrealism’ organized by André Breton to celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the movement.
In the later years of his career, Dali experimented with several unusual media and processes, and many of his works incorporated optical illusions. Between 1960 and 1974 the artist was occupied with the design and construction of his Teatro Museo, a theatre and museum in his home town of Figueres dedicated to his work, which by now spanned several genres and media, including an extensive body of collaborative pieces in film, fashion, photography and architecture.
Towards the end of the 1970s, retrospectives of DalÃ’s work were held in Paris and London, and in 1982, he received the title Marquis de Pubol from King Juan Carlos of Spain. After Gala’s death in 1982, DalÃ’s own health began to fail. He moved from Figueres to a castle in Pubol which he had bought for her. Two years later, he was injured in a fire in his bedroom there, and after this episode returned to Figueres.
Dalà died of heart failure on 23 January, 1989, in Figueres, and was laid to rest there in the crypt of his Theatre-Museum.
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Born
May 11, 1904
Figueres, Spain
Died
January 23, 1989
Figueres, Spain
Exhibitions
Selected Exhibitions
1989 'Salvador DalÃ, 1904-1989',...
Selected Exhibitions
1989 'Salvador DalÃ, 1904-1989', Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart, and was shown later at the Kunsthaus in Zurich 1983 '400 works by Salvador Dalà from 1914 to 1983', was held in Madrid, Barcelona and Figueres 1980 Retrospective of Salvador DalÃ, Tate Gallery, London 1979 Retrospective at the Georges-Pompidou Centre, Paris 1978 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 1973 'DalÃ: His Art in Jewels', Dalà Theatre-Museum, Figueres 1973 Retrospective at The Louisiana Museum, Humlebeak 1973 Retrospective at Moderna Museet of Stockholm 1972 First World Exhibition of holograms that Dalà had created in collaboration with Dennis Gabor presented by The Knoedler Galleries 1971 Retrospective at Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden, Germany 1970 Retrospective at The Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam 1968 'Dada-Surrealism and their Heritage', Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York 1965 'Salvador Dali 1910-1965', The Gallery of Modern Art in New York 1964 Retrospective at Tokyo, organised by Mainichi Newspapers, and then went on to travel to various Japanese cities 1945 'Recent Paintings by Salvador DalÃ', The Bignou Gallery 1941 Julien Levy Gallery in New York 1941 Anthological Exhibition devoted to Dalà and Miró, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York 1939 Julien Levy Gallery, New York1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, organised by André Breton and Paul Eluard for Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition held at the New Burlington Galleries in London 1936 'Fantastic Art Dada Surrealism', Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York 1936 Julien Levy Gallery, New York 1934 Exposition du Cinquantenaire in the Salon des Indépendants of the Grand Palais in Paris 1934 Zwemmer Gallery in London 1934 Julien Levy Gallery, New York 1934 Avery Memorial of the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford, Connecticut 1933 Collective surrealist exhibition at Galerie Pierre Colle 1933 Galerie Pierre Colle, Paris 1933 Julien Levy Gallery in New York 1932 'Surrealism: Paintings, Drawings and Photographs', organised by the Julien Levy Gallery in New York 1932 Galerie Pierre Colle in Paris 1931 Galerie Pierre Colle in Paris 1931 Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford 1929 'Abstrakte und surrealistische Malerei und Plastik', Kunsthaus in Zurich 1929 Galerie Goemans in Paris 1928 Third Autumn Salon at Sala Parés 1928 Twenty-seventh International Exhibition of Paintings in Pittsburgh, United States 1927 Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona 1927 Second Autumn Salon at the city’s Sala Parés gallery 1926 Several exhibitions in Madrid and Barcelona 1925 First Exhibition of the Iberian Artists Society in Madrid 1925 Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona he presented his first individual exhibition 1922 Students Original Art Works Competition Exhibition of the Catalan Students’ Association, held at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona 1919 Societat de Concerts rooms in Figueres’ Municipal Theatre (which was years later to become the Dalà Theatre-Museum)
Honours and Awards
1964 Awarded the Gran Cruz de Isabel la Católica, the highest Spanish distinction 1922 University Vice-Chancellor’s prize for Students Original Art Works Competition Exhibition of the Catalan Students’ Association, held at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona
1964 Awarded the Gran Cruz de Isabel la Católica, the highest Spanish distinction 1922 University Vice-Chancellor’s prize for Students Original Art Works Competition Exhibition of the Catalan Students’ Association, held at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona
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