1. Salvador Dalí
Mad
or
Genius?
“Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supre
pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali.”
-Salvador Dali

2. Difficult childhood
• Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in the town of Figueres, in the Empordà region, close
to the French border in Catalonia, Spain.
• Dalí's older brother, also named Salvador (born October 12, 1901), had died of gastroenteritis
nine months earlier.
• Dalí was told by his parents that he was his brother's reincarnation, a concept which he came
to believe. Of his brother, Dalí said, "...[we] resembled each other like two drops of water, but
we had different reflections."
• Salvador's father had a strict disciplinary approach to raising children. Salvador wouldn't
tolerate his son's outbursts or eccentricities, and punished him severely.
• In February 1921, Dalí's mother died of breast cancer. Dalí was sixteen years old; he later said
his mother's death "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped her...
After her death, Dalí's father married his deceased wife's sister.

3. Influential friends
• In 1922, Dalí moved into the Residencia de Estudiantes (Students' Residence) in Madrid. At
the Residencia, he became close friends with (among others) Pepín Bello, Luis Buñuel, and
Federico García Lorca.
Pepín Bello, García Lorca y Dalí en Madrid in 1924

4. • In 1926 he made his first visit to Paris, where he met with Picasso, whom the
young Dalí revered. Picasso had already heard favorable reports about Dalí from
Joan Miró. As he developed his own style over the next few years, Dalí made a
number of works heavily influenced by Picasso and Miró.
Joan Miró
Pablo Picasso

5. • Dalí devoured influences from many styles of art, ranging from the most
academically classic to the most cutting-edge avant garde. His classical
influences included Raphael, Bronzino, Francisco de Zurbaran, Vermeer, and
Velázquez (from whom he adopted his signature curled moustache).
Diego Velázquez
Salvador
Dalí

6. • In August 1929, Dalí met his muse, inspiration, and future wife Gala, born
Elena Ivanovna Diakonova.

7. • Amongst Dali's most famous friends was Freud. Indeed much of the surrealist
movement can be paralleled with the work of Freud at that time. Psychoanalytic
theory purported to explain and interpret dreams, hidden unconscious desires and
the tapestry of symbolism thereof. This is the foundation of the surrealist
movement.
Sigmund Freud

8. • Dali soon went into film and produced "Un chien d'andalou" (an Andalusian Dog)
with Luis Buñuel, famous for its slitting of the eye image and the symbolic ants
crawling out of the man's arm.
Luis Buñuel
French poster of the film
An image from Dalí's dream, part of the inspiration for the film.

9. Dalí's paranoiac critical method
Dalí's major contribution to the Surrealist Movement was what he called the
"paranoiac-critical method“, a mental exercise of accessing the subconscious to
enhance artistic creativity. Dalí would use the method to create a reality from his
dreams and subconscious thoughts, thus mentally changing reality to what he wanted
it to be and not necessarily what it was. For Dalí it became a way of life.
The idea was the use of double imagery in order to "...systematize confusion and
contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality".

10. First achievements
In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most famous works, “The Persistence of Memory”, which
introduced a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches. The general interpretation of the
work is that the soft watches are a rejection of the assumption that time is rigid or deterministic.
This idea is supported by other images in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and
the other limp watches, shown being devoured by insects.

11. Dalí's heritage
From 1960 to 1974, Salvador Dalí dedicated much of his time to creating the Dalí Teatro Museo
(Theater-Museum) in Figueres, Spain. The museum was the former Municipal Theater where Dalí
had his public exhibition at the age of 14. The original 19th century structure was destroyed at
the end of the Spanish Civil War. Officially opened in 1974 the new structure, formed from the
ruins of the old, was based on Dalí's design. The museum is billed as the World's largest Surrealist
structure, containing a series of spaces that form a single artistic object where each element is an
inextricable part of the whole. The museum houses the broadest range of works by the artist
from his earliest artistic experiences to works of the last years of this life. Several works on
permanent display were created expressly for the museum.

12. Two wealthy American art collectors, A. Reynolds Morse and his wife Eleanor, who had
known Dalí since 1942, set up an organization called "Friends of Dalí" and a
foundation to put the artist on a more secure financial footing. The organization also
established the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

13. Salvador Dalí was born to be a genius. He memorized himself
for many generations for his eccentric view on art and life as a
whole. He is the icon of surrealism, he made a great progress
in this movement in art and earned the right to be called a
genius, who had left behind a lot of mysteries for our
contemporaries yet to discover.

14. Most famous pieces of art by Salvador Dalí
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee
The Metamorphosis of Narcissus

15. The elephants
Face of Mae West
Lobster Telephone

16. Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of
the New Man
Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder
Soft Self-portrait with Grilled Bacon

17. Portrait of Picasso
Still Life Moving Fast
The Face of War

18. Landscape near Figueras
The Invisible Man
Galatea of the spheres

19. The en D

20. Resources
http://www.biography.com/people/salvador-dalí-40389#.UGlz4BEuG1M.delicious
http://www.edali.org/biography.jsp
http://www.surrealists.co.uk/dali.php
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