Dalí

Salvador Dalí, commonly known simply as Dalí, was a Spanish painter born on 11 May 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia, and died on 23 January 1989 in the same city. He is one of the most recognizable figures associated with Surrealism, with a career that encompassed painting, sculpture, drawing, film, and photography. Dalí developed the paranoiac-critical method, a technique intended to access subconscious imagery, which he applied to meticulously rendered, dreamlike scenes.

Dalí studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. In the 1920s he joined the Surrealist movement and relocated to Paris, where he befriended and became a central figure in the group led by André Breton. His early mature works, such as The Persistence of Memory (1931), are noted for precise realism that juxtaposes bizarre, irrational images, including melting clocks.

Dalí collaborated with filmmakers, notably on Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930), and contributed to the dream sequence of Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). His imagery drew on science, religion, and classical art references, evolving through the 1940s and 1950s toward more figurative and religious themes, as seen in Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951) and The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955).

In the 1940s and beyond, Dalí divided his time between Europe and the United States and settled in Catalonia. He established the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, which opened in 1974 and houses a large portion of his work. He remained active artistically into the 1980s, leaving a substantial and diverse body of work.

Dalí's eclectic persona and striking imagery helped secure his place as a leading figure in 20th-century art. His paintings are represented in major museums worldwide, and his name has become synonymous with surrealism in popular culture.