Salvador Dalí - vendere e comprare opere
11 May 1904, Figueres, Catalonia (Spain) - 23 January 1989, ibid
The Spanish painter Salvador Dalí, who later rose to global fame as a graphic artist, author, sculptor and stage designer, is among the most noteworthy representatives of 20th century Surrealism.
After an early period of self-discovery, Dalí started to develop his very personal style from the 1930s onward, which was strongly influenced by dreams, the unconscious and fantasy. His works remain extremely popular among a broad audience and are represented in the most important museums around the world.
Salvador Dalí was born into a prosperous, bourgeois family, but his fears and anxieties overshadowed his childhood. Being at his older brother’s grave is said to have always filled him with terrible trepidation. He found a sanctuary from the strictness of his father and his anguish in the attic, where he spent long hours immersed in daydreams and fantasies. Dalí first began to express his thoughts in painting at the age of six, and was sent for drawing lessons. Young Dalí experienced a turbulent adolescence, including temporary involvement with anarchist and Marxist groups, which even led to his imprisonment for several weeks. It was during this period that many respected artists discovered his exceptional talent and took him under their wings. He studied art at the prestigious Academia San Fernando in Madrid, where he was acquainted with Federico Garcia Lorca and Luis Bunuel.
In 1926, Dalí visited Pablo Picasso in Paris, who left a deep impression.
He finally embraced Surrealism in his 1927 painting Honey is Sweeter than Blood. In 1929, he met Gala, his future wife, while shooting the famous film Un Chien Andalou with Bunuel. She was married at the time to the poet Paul Eluard, but left an indelible mark on Dalí’s work from then on.
In 1934, he celebrated a triumphant exhibition in New York. Dalí spent time in many regions of Europe during the Spanish Civil War, before finally settling in Italy, where Florence and Rome in particular influenced his artistic oeuvre. The works by Sigmund Freud and Stefan Zweig added direction to his art as well. Dalí was among the first artists to incorporate insight from psychoanalysis in his work, and was interested also in mysticism and natural sciences. After breaking with the Surrealists in 1939, Dalí published his Declaration of the Independence of the Imagination and of the Rights of Man to His Own Madness. He published his Diary of a Genius in 1964.
Salvador Dalí succumbed to Parkinson’s disease in 1981, and spent his final years completely withdrawn from public life after the death of his wife. Entitled The Swallow’s Tail, he produced his final painting in 1983. The prodigiously talented artist died of heart failure in his home in Figueres in 1989.