| Salvador Dali was born at 8:45 in the morning on May 11, 1904 at number 20 Monturiolin in the town of Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. He was the son of a comfortable middle class notary named Salvador Dali i Cusi. In time, he became a painter best known for his surrealist works. He gained a reputation as a very flamboyant painter and an occasional writer, sculptor and experimental filmmaker. Overall, Dali generally is considered the greatest Surrealist artist. He used bizarre and unusual dream imagery to create unforgettable and unmistakable landscapes of his inner world in his paintings. Dali's work is most noted for its brilliant combination of bizarre dreamlike images with excellent draftsmanship. His painting skills were influenced by the Renaissance masters. Dali's most famous work is entitled The Persistence Of Memory. Dali often clashed with André Breton and other members of the so-called "official" Surrealist circle over the content of his paintings and the right-wing views he sometimes espoused throughout his life. He ended up being kicked out of the group in 1934. In time, Breton coined a brilliant anagram with Dali's name: "Avida Dollars." The anagram more or less translates to "Eager for Dollars." For his part, Dali shot back, that the only difference between him and the surrealists was that he was a surrealist.
In the 1920s Dali's works are shown at exhibitions, and he gains popularity. In 1929 he joins the group of surrealists organized by Andre Breton.
In 1934 he unofficially marries Gala (the official wedding took place in 1958 in the Spanish town Zhirona). The same year, for the first time, he visits the USA.
After the coming to power of Caudilho Franco in 1936 Dali quarrels with the surrealists who were standing on the leftist positions, and he was excluded from the group. To this Dali answers not without reason and declares: "I myself am surrealism".
1981: He develops Parkinson disease and in the year 1982, Gala dies.
With the beginning of the Second World War, Dali together with Gala leaves for the USA where they lived from 1940 to 1948. In 1942 "the Secret life of Salvador Dali" lets out the autobiography. His literary experiences, as well as works of art, as a rule, happen to be commercially successful.
After returning to Spain he lives mainly in his favorite Catalonia. Dali died on January, 23rd, 1989 of a heart attack. The body of the artist was immured in a wall in the Dali museum in Figurers. In this room it is forbidden to photograph with a flash.
His most known and significant works:
"Self-portrait with a Raphaelesque neck" (1920-1921)
It is one of the first works of El Salvador. It is executed in the impressionistic style.
"Portrait of Luis Buñuel" (1924)
As well as "Still-life" (1924) or "the Puristichesky still-life" (1924), the given picture was created during a search by Dali of the manner and style of execution, and on atmosphere like cloths by De Kirico.
"Flesh on stones" (1926)
Dali named Picasso as the second father. The given painting is executed is unusual for Salvador's cubistic manner, and as well as earlier he had written "the Kubist self-portrait" (1923).
"The adaptation and the hand" (1927)
Experiments with geometrical forms proceeded. That mystical desert, a manner of a writing the landscape, peculiar to the Dali of the "surrealistic" period, and also some other artists (in particular, the Ivu of Tangi) was already felt.
"The Invisible Man" (1929)
Also named "Invisible being", the picture shows the metamorphoses, the latent senses and contours of subjects. Salvador quite often came back to the given style, having made it one of the basic lines of the painting. It is in some later pictures, such as, for example, "Swans Reflecting Elephants" (1937) and "Apparition of a Face and Fruit Dish on the Beach" (1938).
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