Biography: Venture Into Salvador Dali

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali I Domenech was born on May 11, 1904 in Figueras, Catalonia Spain an agricultural town located on the foothills of the Pyrenees away from the French border of Catalonia. The son of a wealthy attorney and notary, a strict disciplinarian and his mother Felipa Domenech Femes who encouraged her son's talents. His two siblings, his older brother died of the disease meningitis, prior to the artist's birth and his sister Anna Maria who was three years older. Dali spent most of his childhood days in his native homeland Figueras at the family summer home in the coastal village of Cadaques.

Dali discovers modern painting while on a summer vacation to Cadaques with the Picnot family of the artist Ramon Picnot. Dali's father organized an exhibition of drawings in their home. The first public exhibition was in Figueres, taken place at the Municipal Theater.

1921. Dali's mother dies of breast cancer when he was 16 year of age. "It was the greatest blow I had experience in my life. I worshipped her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul" After her death, Dali's father would marry Felipa sister, he was not at all happy about the marriage.

After having moved out, he moves into the Residencia de estudiantes in Madrid and studied at the San Fernado School of Fine Arts. He had become an eccentric by wearing long hair and side burns, coat, stockings, and knee breeches, quite an obscure man of his time and a trend that was taken after the 17th century Spanish artist Diego Velazquez. During his time at the San Fernado Schook of Fine Arts, he begins to work with the idea of cubism. He had met people like poet Federico Garcia Lorca and filmmaker Luis Bunuel. When visiting Paris, Dali had been acquainted with Pablo Picasso, who had known of Dali and his works through Joan Miro. Dali was also an admirer of Picasso and influenced by his works.

In theater, Dali is remembered for creating the scenery for Garcia Lorca's romantic play Mariana Pineda. For Bacehanale, a ballet based on and set the music of Richard Wagner's 1845 opera Tamhauser, Dali provided both the set design and the libretto. In the production of Un Chien Andalou, a 17-minute French art film co-written with Louis Bunel, which is widely remembered for the graphic scene of the slicing open of a human eyeball with a razor. In fashion, he's worked with Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and was hired to produce white dress with a lobster print. Dali made designs such as a shoe-shaped hat and a pink belt with lips for a buckle and created textile designs and perfume bottles.

In 1925, as a young man he attended the San Fernado Academy of fine Arts in Madrid, where the recognition of his talent became worthwhile, when he started a one-man show in Barcelona with an assimilated number of paintings. He spent most of his time designing theater sets, interiors, and jewelry. He would then begin to transition into making films; he works with Spanish film director Luis Bunuel on the An-Andalusian Dog in 1929 and The Golden Age in 1930. In Dali's participation for being mainly responsible for helping Bunuel write the script for the film had a creative impact in the project. The Basket of Bread was shown in the third annual Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in 1928. The following year he also joined the Surrealists led by Dadaist Andre Breton.

Dali would have conflict with member surrealist over political issues, this is what had differed Dali from the other members of the group, and the surrealist movement from then on had criticized against him and his beliefs. Also, he would meet his future wife Gala Eluard, a Russian immigrant. When visiting in Cadaques with her husband, poet Paul Eluard. Gala had become Dali's lover, muse, associate, and inspiration. Dali and Gala had lived together and then married in civil ceremony.

In the 1930's, Dali went towards painting of the academic taste, under the influence of Raphael. Although, in Persistence of Memory is used with puzzling symbols, which he uses in his persona, it was his most famous known work of enigma in 1931. His paintings had then begun to express a mixture of violence and sexuality associations of some sort, also the fascination with the landscape of Catalonia. However, he was moving into a new type of painting with a preoccupation with science and religion. His youth embraced him for a time both anarchism and communism. His writings accounts various anecdotes of making radical political statements. Having failed into the circle of mostly Marxist surrealist who accused as enemies the monarchist on one hand and the anarchist on the other, Dali explained to them that he himself was an anarchist-monarchist.

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Dali fled from fighting and refused to align himself with any group. He returned to Catalonia after World War II, during the time of the Franco regime, Dali was a supporter and praised him for his leadership and in return, Dali paints a portrait of Franco's granddaughter.

In the 1940's, Dali and Gala escaped from Europe during World War II, spending their time in the United States. The Museum of Modern Art in New York gave Dali his first major exhibit in 1941, and in 1942, the publication of Dali's autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali and his sister Anna Maria publishes a book about her brother Dali, Dali As Seen By His Sister. In 1946, the Temptation of St. Anthony was the first painting that included Dali's symbolic elephant.

Dali created a world in which, commonplace objects are adjoining, deformed, or metamorphosed in a bizarre tone. He was the first to input holography in artistic nature, and with visual figments, and natural science and mathematics. The flaccid shapes, anamorphoses and double-sided figures within a combination to create and extraordinary universe where the erotic and bizarre fascination for the decay. Especially, the people who knew him well and loved his art would be annoyed as much as his critics, nevertheless his eccentric manner drew more public attention then his art did. Between the 1950's through the 1970's, Dali painted many of his works in religious fashion and erotic subjects, his childhood memories, and centering his wife Gala.

On June 10, 1882, Gala had died, and Dali had lost much of his will to live and acted on a suicide attempt by dehydrating himself. Dali's health was detoriating; he was burned in a fire in his home in Pubol in 1984 and was rescued and returned to Figueres. Having spent the part of his life in complete isolation, first in Pubol and then in his apartments at Torre Galatea. January 23, 1989 at the age of 84, Salvador Dali dies due to heart failure with respiratory problems and is buried in the crypt of his Teatro Museo in Figueres.

The Persistance of Memory, with the soft or melting watches is considered to be one of the best Surrealist works that he exhibited international surrealist exhibitions throughout the decade. The interpretation of the work is that the soft watches is part of Einstein's theory that time is relative and not fixed and is supported by other images in the work that include ants and fly devouring the other watches. Dali's fascination with ants had begun when he was a young boy that had a pet bat, one day he discovers his bat was dead and covered in ants, it become a developing fascination and fear of ants. Dali produced large canvases; amongst the best known of these works are the Hallucinogenic Toreador, The Discovery of America, and The Sacrament of the Last Supper. There have been allegations that his guardians forced the artist to sign blank canvases that would later be used to be sold as originals.

Two of the most popular objects of the surrealist movement where the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips sofa. The Mae West Lips sofa is shaped after the lips of the actress who Dali found fascinating; he also did another artwork of Mae West The Face of Mae West. Dali produced over 1,500 paintings throughout his life producing illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theater sets and costumes, a great member of drawings, dozens of sculptures, and various projects. Dali's works can be found at the Dali Theater and Museum and the Salvador Dali Museum and the Salvador Dali Gallery.

The artist worked extensively in the graphic arts producing many etchings and lithographs. His early work in printmaking as he saw as a money making scheme and would only sell the rights to images and not be involved in the production. From his earlier impressionist paintings through his transitional surrealist works and cubism and futurism and into classical transition. Dali produced a variety of works such as oil painting, watercolors, drawings, graphics, sculptures, films, photographs, performance pieces, and jewelry. The symbolic complexity and creativity has always set a standard for the art of the twentieth century.