Salvador Domingo Felipe Dali I Domenech, born in 1904, is one of the most famous painters of the 20th century and the most remarkable painter of Surrealism. Dali acquired very young a precious gift for drawing and paints his first painting, a landscape, in 1910 at the age of six years old. In 1918, the young Dali exhibits his first paintings at the municipal theatre. He also writes texts about Michel-Angelo, El Greco, Leonard de Vinci and Goya for Studium, a local journal.

Between 1919 and 1921, Dali principally paints portraits and landscapes. He practices and makes a lot of experimentations on colours and matters, going through Impressionism, Pointillism and Fauve. In 1921, Dali enters the Beaux Arts Academy in Madrid, where he initiates himself into still life painting and Cubism. The same year, he participates to a collective exhibition at the gallery Dalmau in Barcelona. Then, the same gallery dedicates a solo show to him in 1925. During this period, Dali is strongly influenced by Derain’s construction, lightness and neo-realist technic. The same year, he is fired from Beaux-Art Academy because he contests the talent of his professors. Thus, Dali multiplies his researches on technics he already masters, as Impressionism, Pointillism, Futurism, and Cubism that continues to influence his artwork of 1926-1927, even if we already feel a strong momentum towards Surrealism.

In 1926, Dali realises his first journey to Paris, where he met Picasso. At this time, Dali already started to paint as a surrealist. In 1929, he publishes the Yellow Manifesto, and realises in 1929 his first movie with Luis Buñuel, An Andalusia Dog. This same year, Dali starts to paint his “trompe l’oeil photography”, thus becoming, twenty-five years before, the master of Hyperrealists. He uses this technic – this hand-painted photography precision – to transpose dream in images. This painting is the photography of extra-pictorial images of concrete irrationality. This is the beginning of the artwork of the only absolute and totally surrealist painter. This is the start of the series Apparels that allows him the absolute liberation of his paranoiac-critic painting. The same year, Dali went to Paris and his friend Miró introduced him to Tzara and the surrealists. He also met Paul Eluard, accompanied by his wife Gala, who becomes Dali’s wife and muse. 

In 1930, Dali creates his famous painting method: Paranoïa-Critic. The same year, he produced his second film with Luis Buñuel: The Golden Age. In 1931, appear in his painting his famous “melting clocks”, as in The Persistence of Memory that illustrates the morphological theory and aesthetic of hard and soft. The hard part is symbolized by Catalan architecture and landscapes, the soft by melting clocks. The soft watches also figure Dali, who explains that his love for Gala protects him and closes him in a shell inside which he becomes soft. The soft aspect of a Camembert cheese inspired him this idea of melting clock. Some times later, Julien Levy buys the painting, and thus makes Dali known in United-States. The art dealer organises in 1934 an exhibition in New York dedicated to Dali. Prior to this, Dali participates to the first Surrealist Exhibition in United-States in 1932 and collaborates regularly to the Surrealist Revolution. In 1933, he publishes in Minotaur his work Terrifying and comestible beauty of Modern Style Architecture and thus revives 1900’s aesthetic.

The first divergences between Dali and Surrealism happened in 1934. André Breton nicknames Dali “Avid Dollars” and reproach him his mundane life. Yet, Dali is considered as the most important surrealist painter all around the world. Exhibitions succeed one after another for Dali. For the Salon des Independents in 1934, Dali shows Homage to Guillaume Tell that illustrates his father’s separation. This is his farewell to his father, the metamorphosis of the child free from paternal authority. This painting allows Dali to transforms his oedipal complex in a personal mythology. In 1936, Dali publishes a capital essay, Irrational Conquest, where he explains his researches on the Paranoiac-critic activity, that he defines as a spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on interpretive-critic association of exuberant phenomenon.

Meanwhile, Spain goes through Civil War (1936 – 1939). Gala and Dali went to Italia for a while, where Dali is strongly influenced by Renaissance masters.

In 1936 , Dali makes a plaster reproduction of a famous Greek sculpture: the Venus de Milo, opened with 6 drawers. Drawers opening a character are part of the iconography of Dali , they appear quite often in his drawings and paintings, but here it is a classical sculpture to which he applies this pattern. In Freudian symbolism drawers corresponding to the depths of the psyche and Dali, who venerated the father of psychoanalysis, suits this design.

In 1938, he participates at the Surrealism International Exhibition that marks the movement’s height. The same year, Dali met Freud thanks to Stefan Zweig. This meeting is an absolute revelation for him, he draws many portraits of the Austrian psychoanalyst.

The year 1939 marks the complete separation of Dali with Surrealism, especially with Breton who, according to Dali, decrees to many limits to unconsciousness aesthetic and doesn’t let place to uncontrolled adventure, while Dali is a no-limit surrealist, by virtue of his nature.

In 1940, the couple settled in New York, until 1948. In 1941, Museum of Modern Art in New York organises an exhibition Dalí – Miró. Theses American years are full of activities: numerous exhibitions, decorates apartment as for Helena Rubinstein, collaborates with revues such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, and he realises numerous decors and costumes for theatres and ballet. In 1946, he realises numerous models for Walt Disney’s cartoons, and a stage setting for Alfred Hitchcock’s film.

In 1947, Dali paints The Temptation of Saint Antoine: transitional dimension between Heaven and Hearth figured by elephants. This initiates levitation theme that will be later the central theme of his Corpuscular Mystical paintings.

In 1948, Dali and Gala return to Europe. The beginning of the 1950’s marks the beginning of his Corpuscular period and Dali writes the Mystic Manifesto. In 1952, many exhibitions are dedicated to him in Roma and Venice, and in United-States. In 1953, Dali makes a very popular conference at Sorbonne in Paris on his Paranoiac-critical method.

At the beginning of 1960’s, Dali creates large mystical painting, as the Oecumenical Council. In 1961, Dali makes decors for his creation Gala’s Ballet, choreographed by Boris Béjart. In 1964, the first retrospective is organised in Tokyo, and the Salvador Dali Museum opens in 1971 in Cleveland (and then transferred to Florida) that shelters collection of E. and A. Morse.

In 1978, Dali discovers works of the mathematician René Thom on catastrophes mathematic theories that largely influences his painting who only swears by catastrophes phenomena’s to create. The Guggenheim Museum organises an exhibition of his hyper-stereoscopic paintings. The same year, Dali is nominated as Member of Beaux-Arts Academy of Paris. A big retrospective is dedicated to him at Georges Pompidou Centre, and then at the Tate Gallery in London. In 1983, two retrospectives are dedicated to him in Madrid and Barcelona. This same year, Dali paints his last painting, La Queu d'Aronde, a work heavily influenced by the mathematical catastrophe theory of René Thom.