Salvador Dalí had a difficult childhood that involved the death of his older brother and mother, which had a profound impact on him. He became close friends with influential artists like Luis Buñuel and Federico García Lorca. Dalí was heavily influenced by Picasso and developed his own surrealist style. He is most famous for works like "The Persistence of Memory" and pioneering the paranoiac-critical method. In later life, Dalí dedicated himself to creating the Dalí Theater-Museum in Figueres, Spain, which houses many of his works. He is considered a genius and the iconic figure of the surrealist movement.

1. Salvador Dalí
Mad
or
Genius?
“Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme
pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali.”
-Salvador Dali

2. Difficult childhood
• Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in the town of Figueres, in the Empordà region,
close to the French border in Catalonia, Spain.
• Dalí's older brother, also named Salvador (born October 12, 1901), had died of gastroenteritis
nine months earlier.
• Dalí was told by his parents that he was his brother's reincarnation, a concept which he came
to believe. Of his brother, Dalí said, "...[we] resembled each other like two drops of water,
but we had different reflections."
• Salvador's father had a strict disciplinary approach to raising children. Salvador wouldn't
tolerate his son's outbursts or eccentricities, and punished him severely.
• In February 1921, Dalí's mother died of breast cancer. Dalí was sixteen years old; he later said
his mother's death "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her...”.
After her death, Dalí's father married his deceased wife's sister.

3. Influential friends
• In 1922, Dalí moved into the Residencia de Estudiantes (Students' Residence) in
Madrid. At the Residencia, he became close friends with (among others) Pepín
Bello, Luis Buñuel and Federico García Lorca.
Pepín Bello, García Lorca y Dalí in Madrid in 1924

4. • In 1926 he made his first visit to Paris, where he met with Picasso, whom the
young Dalí revered. Picasso had already heard favorable reports about Dalí from
Joan Miró. As he developed his own style over the next few years, Dalí made a
number of works heavily influenced by Picasso and Miró.
Joan Miró
Pablo Picasso

5. • Dalí devoured influences from many styles of art, ranging from the most
academically classic to the most cutting-edge avant garde. His classical
influences included Raphael, Bronzino, Francisco de Zurbaran, Vermeer and
Velázquez (from whom he adopted his signature curled moustache).
Diego Velázquez
Salvador
Dalí

6. • In August 1929, Dalí met his muse, inspiration, and future wife Gala, born
Elena Ivanovna Diakonova.

7. • Amongst Dali's most famous friends was Freud. Indeed much of the surrealist
movement can be paralleled with the work of Freud at that time. Psychoanalytic
theory purported to explain and interpret dreams, hidden unconscious desires and
the tapestry of symbolism thereof. This is the foundation of the surrealist
movement.
Sigmund Freud

8. • Dali soon went into film and produced "Un chien d'andalou" (an Andalusian Dog)
with Luis Buñuel, famous for its slitting of the eye image and the symbolic ants
crawling out of the man's arm.
Luis Buñuel
French poster of the film
An image from Dalí's dream, part of the inspiration for the film.

9. Dalí's paranoiac critical method
Dalí's major contribution to the Surrealist Movement
was what he called the "paranoiac-critical method“,
a mental exercise of accessing the subconscious to
enhance artistic creativity.
Dalí would use the method to create a reality
from his dreams and subconscious thoughts,
thus mentally changing reality to what he
wanted it to be and not necessarily what it was.
For Dalí it became a way of life.
The idea was the use of double imagery in order to
"...systematize confusion and contribute
to the total discrediting of the world of reality".

10. First achievements
In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most famous works, “The
Persistence of Memory”, which
introduced a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket
watches. The general interpretation of the
work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the
assumption that time is rigid or deterministic.
This idea is supported by
other images in the work,
such as the wide expanding
landscape, and
the other limp watches,
shown being devoured by
insects.

11. Dalí's heritage
From 1960 to 1974, Salvador Dalí dedicated much of his time to creating the Dalí Teatro Museo
(Theater-Museum) in Figueres, Spain. The museum was the former Municipal Theater where Dalí
had his public exhibition at the age of 14. The original 19th century structure was destroyed at
the end of the Spanish Civil War. Officially opened in 1974 the new structure, formed from the
ruins of the old, was based on Dalí's design.
The museum is billed as the World's
largest Surrealist structure, containing a
series of spaces that form a single artistic
object where each element is an
inextricable part of the whole. The
museum houses the broadest range of
works by the artist from his earliest artistic
experiences to works of the last years of
this life. Several works on
permanent display were created expressly
for the museum.

12. Two wealthy American art collectors, A. Reynolds Morse and his wife Eleanor, who had
known Dalí since 1942, set up an organization called "Friends of Dalí" and a
foundation to put the artist on a more secure financial footing. The organization also
established the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

13. Salvador Dalí was born to be a genius. He memorized himself for
many generations for his eccentric view on art and life as a
whole. He is the icon of surrealism, he made a great progress in
this movement in art and earned the right to be called a genius,
who had left behind a lot of mysteries for our contemporaries
yet to discover.

14. Most famous pieces of art by Salvador Dalí
in chronological order
Early Period ( 1914-1926)
Landscape near Figueras (1910)

15. The Invisible Man(1929)
From Neo-Cubism to Early Surrealism( 1926-1929)

16. Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her
Shoulder (1933)
“I myself am surrealism”
(1929-1934)

17. Face of Mae West ( 1934-1935)
“Paranoiac-critical method” (1934-1937)
Lobster Telephone( 1936)

18. The Face of War (1940)
Geopoliticus Child
Watching the Birth of
the New Man (1943)
Soft Self-portrait with Grilled Bacon (1941)
“The American Dream” ( 1938-1949)

19. Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee
(1943) Portrait of Picasso(1947)

20. Living Still Life (1956)
Galatea of the spheres (1952)
“Nuclear Mysticism” (1949-1962)

21. The Last Period ( 1963-1983)
The Three Glorious Enigmas of Gala (1982)

22. The en D

23. Resources
http://www.biography.com/people/salvador-dalí-40389#.UGlz4BEuG1M.delicious
http://www.edali.org/biography.jsp
http://www.surrealists.co.uk/dali.php
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