114 Facts About Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech, Marquess of Dali of Pubol was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.

Salvador Dali moved closer to Surrealism in the late 1920s and joined the Surrealist group in 1929, soon becoming one of its leading exponents.

Salvador Dali lived in France throughout the Spanish Civil War before leaving for the United States in 1940 where he achieved commercial success.

Salvador Dali returned to Spain in 1948 where he announced his return to the Catholic faith and developed his "nuclear mysticism" style, based on his interest in classicism, mysticism, and recent scientific developments.

Dali's older brother, who had been named Salvador was born on 12 October 1901, and had died of gastroenteritis nine months earlier, on 1 August 1903.

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Salvador Dali's father, Salvador Luca Rafael Aniceto Dali Cusi was a middle-class lawyer and notary, an anti-clerical atheist and Catalan federalist, whose strict disciplinary approach was tempered by his wife, Felipa Domenech Ferres, who encouraged her son's artistic endeavors.

Salvador Dali later attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to an "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descendants of the Moors.

Salvador Dali was haunted by the idea of his dead brother throughout his life, mythologizing him in his writings and art.

Salvador Dali had a sister, Anna Maria, who was three years younger.

Salvador Dali attended the Municipal Drawing School at Figueres in 1916 and discovered modern painting on a summer vacation trip to Cadaques with the family of Ramon Pichot, a local artist who made regular trips to Paris.

The next year, Salvador Dali's father organized an exhibition of his charcoal drawings in their family home.

Salvador Dali had his first public exhibition at the Municipal Theatre in Figueres in 1918, a site he would return to decades later.

Salvador Dali did not resent this marriage, because he had great love and respect for his aunt.

In 1922, Salvador Dali moved into the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid and studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

Salvador Dali had long hair and sideburns, coat, stockings, and knee-breeches in the style of English aesthetes of the late 19th century.

In May 1925 Salvador Dali exhibited eleven works in a group exhibition held by the newly formed Sociedad Iberica de Artistas in Madrid.

Salvador Dali held his first solo exhibition at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, from 14 to 27 November 1925.

Salvador Dali left the Royal Academy in 1926, shortly before his final exams.

Salvador Dali described the earlier of these works, Honey is Sweeter than Blood, as "equidistant between Cubism and Surrealism".

Salvador Dali was influenced by many styles of art, ranging from the most academically classic, to the most cutting-edge avant-garde.

In 1929, Salvador Dali collaborated with Surrealist film director Luis Bunuel on the short film.

Salvador Dali later claimed to have played a significant role in the filming of the project, but this is not substantiated by contemporary accounts.

Salvador Dali was a Russian immigrant ten years his senior, who at that time was married to Surrealist poet Paul Eluard.

The Surrealists hailed what Salvador Dali was later to call his paranoiac-critical method of accessing the subconscious for greater artistic creativity.

The final straw was when Don Salvador Dali read in a Barcelona newspaper that his son had recently exhibited in Paris a drawing of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, with a provocative inscription: "Sometimes, I spit for fun on my mother's portrait".

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Salvador Dali refused, perhaps out of fear of expulsion from the Surrealist group, and was violently thrown out of his paternal home on 28 December 1929.

Salvador Dali's father told him that he would be disinherited and that he should never set foot in Cadaques again.

Salvador Dali soon bought the cabin, and over the years enlarged it by buying neighboring ones, gradually building his beloved villa by the sea.

In 1931, Salvador Dali painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory, which developed a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches.

Salvador Dali had two important exhibitions at the Pierre Colle Gallery in Paris in June 1931 and May–June 1932.

Salvador Dali continued to paint her as they both aged, producing sympathetic and adoring images of her.

Salvador Dali's first visit to the United States in November 1934 attracted widespread press coverage.

Salvador Dali wore a glass case on his chest containing a brassiere and Gala dressed as a woman giving birth through her head.

Salvador Dali insisted that Surrealism could exist in an apolitical context and refused to explicitly denounce fascism.

Later in 1934, Salvador Dali was subjected to a "trial", in which he narrowly avoided being expelled from the Surrealist group.

In 1936, Salvador Dali took part in the London International Surrealist Exhibition.

Salvador Dali's lecture, titled, was delivered while wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet.

Salvador Dali had arrived carrying a billiard cue and leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds and had to have the helmet unscrewed as he gasped for breath.

In December 1936 Salvador Dali participated in the Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at MoMA and a solo exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.

Salvador Dali later described it as, "a vast human body breaking out into monstrous excrescences of arms and legs tearing at one another in a delirium of auto-strangulation".

From 1933 Salvador Dali was supported by Zodiac, a group of affluent admirers who each contributed to a monthly stipend for the painter in exchange for a painting of their choice.

Salvador Dali was in London when the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936.

Nevertheless, Salvador Dali avoided taking a public stand for or against the Republic for the duration of the conflict.

In January 1938, Salvador Dali unveiled Rainy Taxi, a three-dimensional artwork consisting of an automobile and two mannequin occupants being soaked with rain from within the taxi.

In September 1938, Salvador Dali was invited by Gabrielle Coco Chanel to her house "La Pausa" in Roquebrune on the French Riviera.

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At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Salvador Dali debuted his Dream of Venus Surrealist pavilion, located in the Amusements Area of the exposition.

Salvador Dali announced the death of the Surrealist movement and the return of classicism in his exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in April–May 1941.

Salvador Dali's work attracted significant attention of critics and the exhibition later toured eight American cities, enhancing his reputation in America.

In October 1942, Dali's autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali was published simultaneously in New York and London and was reviewed widely by the press.

Salvador Dali published a novel Hidden Faces in 1944 with less critical and commercial success.

In November–December 1945 Salvador Dali exhibited new work at the Bignou Gallery in New York.

Salvador Dali executed designs for a number of ballets including Labyrinth, Sentimental Colloquy, Mad Tristan, and The Cafe of Chinitas.

Salvador Dali produced artwork and designs for products such as perfumes, cosmetics, hosiery and ties.

In 1946 Salvador Dali worked with Walt Disney and animator John Hench on an unfinished animated film Destino.

Salvador Dali exhibited new work at the Bignou Gallery from November 1947 to January 1948.

Salvador Dali was angered by passages that he considered derogatory towards his wife Gala and broke off relations with his family.

When Salvador Dali's father died in September 1950 Salvador Dali learned that he had been virtually disinherited in his will.

In paintings such as The Madonna of Port Lligat, The Christ of Saint John on the Cross and The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali sought to synthesize Christian iconography with images of material disintegration inspired by nuclear physics.

Salvador Dali was fascinated by the Tesseract, using it, for example, in Crucifixion.

Salvador Dali had been extensively using optical illusions such as double images, anamorphosis, negative space, visual puns and trompe-l'œil since his Surrealist period and this continued in his later work.

At some point, Salvador Dali had a glass floor installed in a room near his studio in Port Lligat.

Salvador Dali made extensive use of it to study foreshortening, both from above and from below, incorporating dramatic perspectives of figures and objects into his paintings.

Salvador Dali experimented with the bulletist technique pointillism, enlarged half-tone dot grids and stereoscopic images.

Salvador Dali was among the first artists to employ holography in an artistic manner.

In 1960, Salvador Dali began work on his Theatre-Museum in his home town of Figueres.

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In 1955 Salvador Dali met Nanita Kalaschnikoff, who was to become a close friend, muse, and model.

At a French nightclub in 1965 Salvador Dali met Amanda Lear, a fashion model then known as Peki Oslo.

In 1968, Salvador Dali bought a castle in Pubol for Gala, and from 1971 she would retreat there for weeks at a time, Salvador Dali having agreed not to visit without her written permission.

In 1980, at age 76, Salvador Dali's health deteriorated sharply and he was treated for depression, drug addiction, and Parkinson-like symptoms, including a severe tremor in his right arm.

However, some critics have questioned how Salvador Dali could have executed a painting with such precision given the severe tremor in his painting arm.

From early 1984 Salvador Dali's depression worsened and he refused food, leading to severe undernourishment.

Salvador Dali had previously stated his intention to put himself into a state of suspended animation as he had read that some microorganisms could do.

Salvador Dali gave the king a drawing, Head of Europa, which would turn out to be Salvador Dali's final drawing.

Salvador Dali is buried in the crypt below the stage of his Theatre-Museum in Figueres.

Salvador Dali saw bread as "the elementary basis of continuity" and "sacred subsistence".

Salvador Dali connects the egg to the prenatal and intrauterine, thus using it to symbolize hope and love.

Salvador Dali later claimed that the idea for clocks functioning symbolically in this way came to him when he was contemplating Camembert cheese.

Salvador Dali linked the rhinoceros to themes of chastity and to the Virgin Mary.

In December 1936 Salvador Dali sent Harpo Marx a Christmas present of a harp with barbed-wire strings.

Between 1941 and 1970, Salvador Dali created an ensemble of 39 pieces of jewelry, many of which are intricate, some containing moving parts.

Salvador Dali ventured into industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva that Salvador Dali decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain maker's "Studio Linie".

Salvador Dali facilitated the design of the advertising campaign for the 1969 Eurovision Song Contest and created a large on-stage metal sculpture that stood at the Teatro Real in Madrid.

Salvador Dali executed designs for a number of other ballets including Labyrinth, Sentimental Colloquy, Mad Tristan, The Cafe of Chinitas and The Three-Cornered Hat.

Salvador Dali became interested in film when he was young, going to the theater most Sundays.

In 1945 Salvador Dali created the dream sequence in Hitchcock's Spellbound, but neither Salvador Dali nor the director was satisfied with the result.

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Salvador Dali worked with Walt Disney and animator John Hench on the short film Destino in 1946.

Between 1954 and 1961 Salvador Dali worked with photographer Robert Descharnes on The Prodigious History of the Lacemaker and the Rhinoceros, but the film was never completed.

Salvador Dali collaborated with director Jose-Montes Baquer on the pseudo-documentary film Impressions of Upper Mongolia, in which Salvador Dali narrates a story about an expedition in search of giant hallucinogenic mushrooms.

However, Jodorowsky changed his mind after Salvador Dali publicly supported the execution of alleged ETA terrorists in December 1975.

In 1972 Salvador Dali began to write the scenario for an opera-poem called Etre Dieu.

Salvador Dali was involved in creating textile designs and perfume bottles.

In 1950, Salvador Dali created a special "costume for the year 2045" with Christian Dior.

In 1958, Salvador Dali completed Crisalida, a temporary installation promoting a drug, which was exhibited at the 1958 Convention of the American Medical Association in San Francisco.

Salvador Dali published poetry, essays, art criticism, and a technical manual on art.

Salvador Dali worked extensively in the graphic arts, producing many drawings, etchings, and lithographs.

When Salvador Dali officially joined the Surrealist group in 1929 his political activism initially intensified.

However, as political divisions within the Surrealist group grew, Salvador Dali soon developed a more apolitical stance, refusing to publicly denounce fascism.

In 1935 Salvador Dali wrote a letter to Breton suggesting that non-white races should be enslaved.

However, immediately after Franco's victory in 1939, Salvador Dali praised Catholicism and the Falange and was expelled from the Surrealist group.

Salvador Dali was granted an audience with Pope Pius XII in 1949 and with Pope John XXIII in 1959.

Salvador Dali had official meetings with General Franco in June 1956, October 1968, and May 1974.

In 1968, Salvador Dali stated that on Franco's death there should be no return to democracy and Spain should become an absolute monarchy.

Salvador Dali espoused a mystical view of Catholicism and in his later years he claimed to be a Catholic and an agnostic.

Salvador Dali was interested in the writings of the Jesuit priest and philosopher Teilhard de Chardin and his Omega Point theory.

Salvador Dali's painting Tuna Fishing was inspired by his reading of Chardin.

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Salvador Dali said that his wife Gala was the only person with whom he had achieved complete coitus.

Salvador Dali was renowned for his eccentric and ostentatious behavior throughout his career.

Salvador Dali frequently traveled with his pet ocelot Babou, even bringing it aboard the luxury ocean liner SS France.

Salvador Dali was known to avoid paying at restaurants by executing drawings on the checks he wrote.

Salvador Dali's theory was the restaurant would never want to cash such a valuable piece of art, and he was usually correct.

Salvador Dali has been portrayed on film by Robert Pattinson in Little Ashes, and by Adrien Brody in Midnight in Paris.

The creator of the series stated that the Salvador Dali mask was chosen because it was an iconic Spanish image.

The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation protested against the use of Dali's image without the authorisation of the Dali estate.

Salvador Dali produced over 1,600 paintings and numerous graphic works, sculptures, three-dimensional objects, and designs.