Salvador Dali
- Born on May
11, 1904, Salvador Dali i Domenech would become one of the
worlds most recognized surrealist artists. Raised by his
lawyer/notary father and a mother who encouraged her artistic
son, Dali grew up in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, having been told
by his parents that he was the reincarnation of his older
brother, Salvador, who died just nine months before Dalis
birth.
Following the
death of his mother to breast cancer in 1921, Dali moved to the
student residences at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid. He spent
several years studying there and then shortly before his
graduation, he was expelled for declaring that no one on the
faculty of the school was competent enough to examine
him.
By 1931, Dali
had collaborated on a short film with surrealist director Luis
Bunuel; illustrated a book called The Witches of Liers , a poem
written by his friend and classmate Carles Fages de Climent; met
his muse and future wife Gala; and painted arguably his most
famous work The Persistence of Memory. He had officially joined
the surrealist group in Paris, and was hailed by the surrealist
community of artists.
When Salvador
Dali openly supported the regime of Francisco Franco following
the Spanish Civil war, and showed interest in what he referred to
as the Hitler phenomenon , he became somewhat of an outcast
among his fellow artists. Many of his fellow surrealists referred
to Dali in past tense, indicating their feeling that he was dead
to them. He wrote prolifically during this time, and continued
producing his art.
In 1940, Dali
and Gala moved to the United States, and it was during this time
that Dali reclaimed his Catholic faith. In 1942, Dali wrote his
autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali. He asked an
Italian monk to perform an exorcism on him in the late 1940s,
and in exchange for the exorcism, he presented the friar with a
sculpture of Jesus Christ on the cross, which was not discovered
until 2005. Although they had been married civilly in 1934, Dali
and Gala were married in the Catholic Church in
1958.
In the late
1940s, Dali and Gala returned to Spain. Dali continued a
prolific career in art, being one of the first artists to use
holography and taking great inspiration from his Catholic faith
and the events of the day, including the bombing at Hiroshima.
From this time period, two of Dalis most famous works,
Hallucinogenic Toreador and La Gare de Perpignan were
created.
Dalis work was
used in advertising campaigns, most notably for Chupa Chups candy
and Lanvin chocolates, and he became fascinated by DNA and the
hypercube, which can be seen in some of his later
work.
King Juan Carlos
of Spain bestowed upon Dali the title Marquis of Pubol in 1982.
By this time, Dali was seriously ill, having been given
unprescribed medicine by his senile wife Gala. The medications
damaged Dali’s nervous system and gave him Parkinsons like
tremors in his hands.
Gala died in
1982, leaving the stricken Dali devastated. He was brought back
to Figueres in 1984 by friends who felt a deliberate dehydration
of the artist and a fire in his bedroom were suicide
attempts.
On January 23,
1989, Salvador Dali, known for his contributions not only to
surrealism, but also to fashion, theatre, and photography, died
from heart failure. He is buried in a crypt at his Teatro Museo
de Figueres, just steps from his childhood
home.
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