Dalí, Salvador (1904-89): Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. After passing through phases of Cubism, Futurism and Metaphysical painting, he joined the Surrealists in 1929 and his talent for self-publicity rapidly made him the most famous representative of the movement. Throughout his life he cultivated eccentricity and exhibitionism (one of his most famous acts was appearing in a diving suit at the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936), claiming that this was the source of his creative energy.
He took over the Surrealist theory of automatism but transformed it into a more positive method which he named 'critical paranoia'. According to this theory one should cultivate genuine delusion as in clinical paranoia while remaining residually aware at the back of one's mind that the control of the reason and will has been deliberately suspended. His paintings employed a meticulous academic technique that was contradicted by the unreal 'dream' space he depicted and by the strangely hallucinatory characters of his imagery. He described his pictures as 'hand-painted dream photographs' and had certain favorite and recurring images, such as the human figure with half-open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax (The Persistence of Memory, 1931).
In 1937 Dalí visited Italy and adopted a more traditional style. He moved to the USA in 1940 and remained there until 1955. During this time he devoted himself largely to self-publicity; his paintings were often on religious themes, although sexual subjects and pictures centring on his wife Gala were also continuing preoccupations. Apart from painting, Dalí's output included sculpture, book illustration, jewellery design, and film work (collaborating with Luis Buñuel on Un chien andalou and Alfred Hitchcock on Spellbound).
Timeline Highlights:
* 1904: Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí was born on May 11th in Figueres, Spain.
* 1921-25: Attended Academy of Arts in Madrid.
* 1929: Joined the Surrealist movement.
* 1934-37: Created classic works during his paranoid-critical period.
* 1941-44: Lived and worked in the United States.
* 1989: Died on January 23rd in Figueres.
