Great Masters

Located in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains, Figueras is only sixteen miles away south of the French border. His father was quite a well- known notary, and Dali spent many of his boyhood summers residing in the family's vacation home located in the coastal fishing village of Cadaques.

Dali showed no interest in legal matters and his father did not try to prevent him from pursuing his artistic interests and allowed him to stay as much as he wanted with the Pichot family, which nurtured a passion for art.

Dali's father even went as far as allowing his son to have his own studio and that he had everything he needed.

Most of Dali's early works notably showed his intense love of this beautiful Spanish sea resort although most of his paintings during these early years bore the influence of Impressionism, Dali, then only aged 13, began to experiment with a variety of artistic styles after studying under Moreno Carbonero. His Catalonian heritage and upbringing were to have some deep influence on himself and his artistic style, which evolved almost ceaselessly throughout his lifetime.

In the early 1920's Dali studied drawing, and then attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Though he proved to be an academic genius, Dali soon demonstrated he was an outcast. However, his early experiments with cubism, futurism and metaphysical painting gained him some notoriety amongst his peers, and in 1925 his father arranged his first one-man show in Barcelona.

A year earlier, Dali had been expelled from the San Fernando Academy for refusing to take his final graduation oral exams. When asked to deliver his speech about Raphael, Dali declared that he knew more about the subject than his examiners did, and thus refused to complete the requirements. Dali, who somewhat was as bad-tempered as Goya who was a perpetual rebel a century before him, was permanently expelled and never received his formal degree in art training. All the more, he was sent briefly to prison for his anti-governmental activities.

In 1926, he took part in an exhibition in Madrid and discovered the works of Yves Tanguy, a French Surrealist painter, which were to bear some great influence over his career. He also befriended the poet Frederico Garcia Lorca and the movie director Luis Bunuel with whom he closely worked in the making of two films, “The Andalusian dog” and “The Golden age”.

Pursuing his artistic experiments, Dali nevertheless received international attention, when his painting The Basket of Bread was exhibited in 1928 at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh. The same year he went to Paris with the desire of meeting Picasso but instead came to be in touch with members of the Surrealist movement.

1929 was an important year for Dali as he had his first exhibition in Paris where he met his future wife, then Gala Eluard, and both fell instantly in love. Gala went on to become Dali's chief muse, lover, business manager, and partner in life.

Without the strong influence of Gala, who had very much been a muse for the newly formed Surrealist movement, Dali would never have reached the glory that eventually befell him. The other major event for Dali in 1929 was his trip to Paris and his joining of the Surrealist Group, which had been founded by the former Dadaist, Andre Breton. 1929 was also the year when Dali produced some of his best accomplished works.

The Surrealists came to terms with the Dadaists in acknowledging that logical reasoning and many other societal tenets had failed humanity, and that a more acceptable interpretation of the very nature of reality had become necessary. Dali soon became a major figure among the Surrealists to whom he brought his paranoiac-critical method, which opened the way to some delirious logic. Dali thought that artists could not escape paranoia while he only accepted a conceived elaboration of the universe through the sole interpretation of dreams and all delirious processes. In that sense he was opposed to other Surrealist painters, such as Miro, Masson and Tanguy who expressed deep feelings spontaneously.

His newly adopted stand, and his marriage to Gala, eventually brought an end to his relationship with his family. Deeply shocked by his declaration that he "spit with pride” on the face of his mother, and by the fact that Gala was still married to the French poet Paul Eluard, his father expelled him from the family home.

These events, and several others, finally propelled Salvador Dali into his great Surrealist period. Dali soon became a leader among the Surrealists, creating prodigious amounts of artwork in many media.

His 1931 painting Persistence of Memory today remains one of the most well known works of all Surrealist art. Although formally expelled from the Surrealist Movement in 1934 for his alleged fascination towards Hitler, Dali continued to produce the best examples of Surrealist art throughout the 1930's though Breton accused him of being an academic painter.

In response to his removal from the group Dali said: "Surrealism? I am Surrealism!"
Dali exhibited a number of Surrealist paintings throughout Europe for the rest of the decade, often relying on member's of his infamous Zodiac Group for support. By the end of the 1930's and after a trip to Italy in 1937, Dali however came to the conclusion that he needed to find new ideas to enhance his blossoming of thought, emotion, and genius.

This came to him during another important period to, that being the years 1940 and 1941. During this time, Salvador and Gala Dali fled to America from France, on a passage that had been booked and paid for by Picasso himself. Additionally, Gala convinced Dali that "his surrealist glory was nothing" and that he had new heights to achieve. Dali expressed his intense desire to become "classic" and soon began to focus on more traditional, and universal themes for his artwork, choosing the more objective focus over the former Surreal perspective. Back in Spain after the war he turned again to more direct references of his Catalonian upbringing, to his mother's Catholicism, to a simpler and more secluded life in Cadaquès.

Through out the 1940's, 1950's, and 1960's, Salvador Dali was very much the avant- garde artist he had always been. This was contrasted by his many retreats back to Figueras or Cadaques, or Cape Creus, in order to escape the outside world.

Still, Dali created many wonderful works of art, among them the acclaimed Masterworks. Also at this time, Dali's most academic and voracious collectors were Mr and Mrs A. Reynolds Morse of Cleveland, Ohio. Over a period of nearly 40 years, starting in about 1942, the Morse's collected huge amounts of Dali works and media objects including oil paintings, watercolours, sketches, and original manuscripts. Other loyal collectors and media attention soon brought Dali the fame and fortune for which Dali had always yearned.

In 1974 Dali opened his own Teatro Museo in Figueras. Many other international retrospectives followed throughout that decade. Gala died in 1982, after which Dali's health began to fade rapidly. He was badly burned in a fire in 1984, and spent the last few years of his life in relative seclusion in the apartments that he had adjacent to the Teatro Museo. After a pacemaker operation in 1986, Dali had but a few years left to live.

On January 23, 1989, Salvador Dali, the greatest Surrealist painter of all time though he was described by many critics as an exhibitionist who had become synonymous with Surrealism, died in Figueras, from heart failure with respiratory complications.

One notable fact about Dali was that he was never limited to a particular style or media. Instead, Dali experimented with nearly all known techniques from sculpture to literature to painting. Dali's works show a constantly changing evolution of style. From his earliest Impressionist works, through Cubist, Surrealist, and Purist influences, all the way into his Classical art, Dali continued to integrate a plethora of styles into his own work, creating a magnificent and eclectic whole. His appetite for creation was vast, and over the years Dali spawned a multitude of works from a vast array of media.

Amongst them oils, watercolours, graphics, drawings, jewels, sculpture, poems and writings as well as many art objects. From his earliest works to his most astounding achievements, Salvador Dali showed a genius uniquely his, one that was translated into the world of art for all to behold.
There can be no doubt, Dali stands amongst the most acclaimed and talented artists of all time. His own vision and determination have set in motion an entire movement of thinking, and will continue to set high standards in art for many generations to come.

Still, Dali was always unjustly recognised as he could have staked claim to become Picasso's equal during the 20th Century. This was largely due to his strange personality, which made him a man living outside normal conventions and to his bizarre commitment to the Franco regime. People were thus used to know Dali as an eccentric character and sometimes a clown instead of showing a deep interest in his remarkable works.

In addition, the fact that he had nicknamed himself “Avidadollars”, an anagram of Salvador Dali, made him suspicious of being eager to make money above all. Dali was not easy to understand as a human being and could not behave simply like other artists. Such attitude was detrimental to his work in that sense that he drew considerable attention on his clownish attitude in trying to impose himself as a kind of philosopher whereas his theories turned to be often ridiculous. He showed too much extravaganza in promoting himself and this finally proved useless as much as his irrationality whereas he should have tried to be more natural and consistent with what he produced.