Salvador Dali was a Spanish-Catalan surrealist artist born in 1904 who lived in Port Lligat, Spain, where he found inspiration in the rock formations near his home by the Mediterranean Sea. The document discusses Dali's tendency to see shapes in the rocks, like animals, and how this influenced his most famous works like The Persistence of Memory which features a melting clock that resembles a rock formation, and Metamorphosis of Narcissus.