Salvador Dalí (Spanish, born May 11, 1904–died January 23, 1989) was a prominent Surrealist artist. Dalí spent his childhood in the Spanish villages of Figueras and Cadaques. He was influenced by Renaissance masters such as Raphaël. Dalí showed artistic talent at an early age, so his parents arranged for him to receive drawing lessons from Impressionist painter, Ramón Pichot. Dalí was a student at Madrid’s Royal Academy of Art, but he never finished school.
In 1925, the artist held his first solo exhibition in Barcelona. Dalí would gain some international recognition in 1928 when the Carnegie International Exhibition showed three of his works, one of which was Basket of Bread. He met Pablo Picasso in Paris that year. In 1929, he became acquainted with André Breton, a key figure of the budding Surrealist movement. The Surrealists followed Sigmund Freud’s theories concerning unconsciousness and the dream state, and used these theories to incorporate imaginative ideas into their works. Dalí’s The Persistence Of Memory is often cited as one of the most important examples of this style.
World War II forced Dalí and his wife to flee Europe. The couple spent most of the 1940s in the United States. New York’s Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective exhibition of Dalí’s work in 1941. He wrote his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, the following year. Dalí deviated from Surrealism in the 1950s and began painting a more classical series of 19 paintings. These works incorporated topics such as history, religion, and science. Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery holds The Sacrament of the Last Supper, while the Salvador Dalí Museum is home to The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. Dalí not only painted, but also collaborated with other artists in sculpture, photography, and film. Walt Disney collaborated with him on the film Destino, and Alfred Hitchcock commissioned the artist to design a dream sequence for his film Spellbound. Dalí spent the last years of his life in Torre Galatea, Spain. The artist died on January 23, 1989.
