Who was Salvador Dali?

Who was Salvador Dali?
Salvador Dali timeline

About Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali

Spanish-born Salvador Dali was one of the most versatile painters of the 20th century.
From when he first painted a landscape in oil at age six through his late 70s, he continued a truly broad range of expressive activities including not just painting but also sculpture, prints, stage and fashion design, and film production.
Many people probably recall seeing one of Dali’s paintings in art textbooks or elsewhere: The Persistence of Memory, famous for its soft melting pocket watches.

Highly inquisitive, Dali studied and was influenced by earlier styles including impressionism, pointillism, and cubism.
During the 1930s, the surrealism movement was thriving, chiefly in Paris, and Dali too joined the movement.

Considering the main purpose of the pictorial arts to be the unmasking of dreams and deeply hidden desires, he produced numerous fantastic and irrational pictures. His best-known piece from this period is The Persistence of Memory.
His wife Gala provided behind-the-scenes support for these vigorous creative activities.

Salvador Dali

Gala also posed as a model for many of his works. Their relationship was so strong that Dali declared, “Everybody except for Gala is an enemy” and “All of my pictures are drawn with Gala’s blood.” He later would become very famous, staging successful major retrospectives across Europe and in the United States and completing his own museum.

Dali’s words “One can become a genius by performing the role of genius” can be seen as a description of his wide-ranging expressive activities and his own way of life.

Salvador Dali timeline

Note:Works in brackets《　》below are in the collection of the Museum.

Year	Age	Events
1904	-	Born May 11 in Figueres, in northeastern Catalonia, Spain. His father was a notary public.
1908	4 years	Younger sister Anna Maria born.
1910	6 years	Creates first oil painting (a landscape).
1914	10 years	Enrolled in a school of the Order of St. Mary’s. Extended his talents under the artistic influence of Ramon Pichot.
1917	13 years	Taught by Juan Núñez, instructor at a woodblock print school, Dali is influenced by the impressionists and pointillists.
1918	14 years	His works are exhibited at the Figueres Municipal Theatre. Dali is inspired by Mariano Fortuny’s famous work Battle of Tetuan.
1921	17 years	Dali enrolls in the Royal Academy of Art in Madrid. He becomes friends with Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel. His mother Felipa dies.
1922	18 years	In October, Dali exhibits his works as part of an exhibition by a group of students at the Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona. He produces《Cabaret Scene》.
1923	19 years	Dali’s influences during this period include the Italian painter de Chirico.
1924	20 years	Dali is suspended from school for one year, accused of instigating student unrest. In May, he is incarcerated for short periods in Figueres and Gerona on suspicion of participating in anti-government activities.
1925	21 years	Dali returns to school. He holds his first solo exhibition at the Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona in November. Beginning around this time, his works reflect influences including Vermeer’s realism, Picasso’s neoclassicism, and cubism. He produces《Bread and Walnuts》.
1926	22 years	Dali meets Picasso. In October he is expelled from school for refusing to submit his answers to an art history examination. He holds his second solo exhibition at the Dalmau Gallery.
1927	23 years	Dali reads Freud’s psychoanalysis. His works from this period also exhibit the influences of Paris’ surrealism.
1928	24 years	Dali’s works including Basket of Bread and 《Anna Maria》are shown in an international art exhibit in Pittsburgh starting in October. He resides in Paris through the following year. Miro introduces him to the poets and artists of the surrealism group.
1929	25 years	Paul Éluard and his wife Gala visited Dali at Cadaqués during the summer. Dali fell in love with Gala, who would become his lifelong companion. He produced the avant-garde film “An Andalusian Dog” together with Luis Buñuel, and it was shown in Paris. His first solo exhibition in Paris was held at the Gorman Gallery. Dali had formally become a member of the surrealism movement, as André Breton wrote the foreword to the exhibition catalog.
1930	26 years	Screening of “Age of Gold,” a film Dali produced with Buñuel, was banned. Dali began painting double images, influenced by the Spanish architect Gaudí, the Dutch artist Vermeer, and others.
1931	27 years	Dali began painting the works including soft timepieces, such as The Persistence of Memory.
1932	28 years	Dali painted a series of works on the theme of Millet’s The Angelus. He produced《Surrealist Object that Functions Symbolically》.
1933	29 years	Dali held his first solo exhibition in the United States, in New York.
1934	30 years	Dali held his first solo exhibition in London. He was no longer considered a part of the surrealism group. He visited America for the first time, with Gala.
1936	32 years	Dali produced《Venus de Milo with Drawers》. The Spanish Civil War broke out in July. Dali gave a speech in a diving suit at an international surrealism exhibition in London.
1937	33 years	Dali travelled to Italy to escape the civil war. Eight of his works were introduced in the Japanese arts journal Mizue.
1938	34 years	Dali meets Freud in London.
1939	35 years	Dali writes scripts for ballets and other performances and designs the costumes and stage designs.
1941	37 years	Dali’s first major retrospective is held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
1942	38 years	His autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, is published.
1944	40 years	His first novel, Hidden Faces, is published.
1945	41 years	Dali is shocked by the news of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
1946	42 years	Dali illustrates Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
1947	43 years	Dali paints《The Three Sphinxes of Bikini》on the theme of the nuclear bomb tests on Bikini Atoll.
1948	44 years	Port Lligat welcomes Dali back from America. He begins creating classical and religious works.
1949	45 years	He paints The Madonna of Port Lligat, with Gala as his model, and presents the work to Pope Pius XII.
1951	47 years	Dali paints《Portrait of Mrs. Jack Warner》.
1952	48 years	Dali produces 100 illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy.
1955	51 years	Dali paints The Last Supper. He lectures at the Sorbonne on the topic “Phenomenological Aspects of the Paranoid Critical Transformation Method.”
1957	53 years	Dali produces《Dance》and the lithograph《Don Quixote》, which employs a method known as bulletism.
1958	54 years	Dali and Gala renew their marriage vows in a religious ceremony.
1962	58 years	Dali paints《The Battle of Tetuan》.
1963	59 years	The Tragic Myth of Millet's Angelus is published in Paris. An exhibition of Dali’s works is held at the Knoedler Gallery in New York. Dali creates Portrait of My Dead Brother.
1964	60 years	Dali retrospectives are held in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kyoto. Diary of a Genius is published. The King of Spain awards Dali the Order of Isabella the Catholic.
1967	63 years	Dali produces《Swan-Elephant》.
1968	64 years	Books of《Carmen》and the《Marquis de Sade》with illustrations by Dali are published.
1970	66 years	生Construction begins on the Dali Theatre and Museum in his home town of Figueres.
1971	67 years	The Salvador Dali Museum opens in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.
1972	68 years	The first exhibition of Dali’s three-dimensional works is held at the Knoedler Gallery in New York. An exhibition of Dali’s prints is held in Tokyo. Dali gifts the Castle of Púbol near Barcelona to his wife Gala.
1974	70 years	The Dali Theatre and Museum opens in Figueres.
1975	71 years	Dali’s works are shown in the exhibition Surrealism held at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
1977	73 years	Dali creates《Snail and the Angel》and《The Profile of Time》.
1978	74 years	Dali’s first stereoscopic work Dalí Lifting the Skin of the Mediterranean Sea to Show Gala the Birth of Venus is exhibited at an art museum in New York.
1979	75 years	The first major retrospective of Dali’s work in France is held at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
1980	76 years	Dali produces works including《Space Elephant》and《Woman in Flames》.
1982	78 years	The king of Spain awards Dali the Grand Cross. Dali’s wife Gala dies. Weary and in mourning, Dali retires to the Castle of Púbol.
1984	80 years	Dali’s entire body is burned in a fire. He is hospitalized at the Barcelona Municipal Hospital.
1989	84 years	Museum in his home town of Figueres.