Person
Dalí, Salvador (1904-1989)Other forms
Figueres (Girona, España) 1904-05-11 - Figueres (Girona, España) 1989-01-23
Spanish painter, sculptor and great artist. He was also writer and filmmaker. Son of Salvador Dalí Cusí, notary, and Felipa Domènech Ferrés. He had a younger sister, Ana María.
Very young and already talented painter, he was related since his Parisian beginnings to surrealism, becoming one of its most important figures. He cultivated various artistic facets that go from sculpture to photography, including cinema and poetry.
He studied in Madrid at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. In his stay in Madrid he lived at the Students Housing where he befriended Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel and Pepín Bello. He visited Paris several times getting in touch with Picasso and the French surrealist painters.
In 1929 he met his muse and future wife, Gala, whose real name was Helena Ivanovna Diakonova, and he would never be away from her again
After the Spanish Civil War the couple went into exile to the United States for eight years, going back to Spain in 1948.
Among his most relevant creations are: "El Gran Masturbador" (1929), "La persistencia de la memoria" (1931), "Construcción blanda con judías hervidas" (1936) and considered a premonition of the Civil War, "Sueño causado por el vuelo de una abeja alrededor de una granada un segundo antes de despertar" (1944), "Los elefantes" (1948), "La Última Cena" (1955) and "Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas" (1956).
The king Juan Carlos I named him marquis of Dalí de Púbol in 1982. He passed away in Figures at the age of 84.