Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali – Born 11 May 1904 in Figueras, Spain.

Growing up Dali was a difficult child, nonconformist to family and community customs. Dali's father, a respected notary, his mother and younger sister all encouraged Dali's early interest in art, allocating a room in the home to be his first studio.

Early on Dali's talent was already refined beyond his years and with each year his talent only grew, as did his interests.

Art Education
After receiving private art lessons in Figueras for some time, Dali enrolled at the Escuela de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid in 1921. There he joined an avant-garde circle of students that included film maker Luis Bunuel and poet-dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca.

Although Dali excelled in his academic pursuits, he never took final examinations, deciding he had no need for the type of education offered by formal schooling. He was expelled and reinstated, yet it mattered little to him. Salvador Dali's passion of the arts and his need to experience life on his own terms could not be met within the confines of school, so he left.

However, his father was most unhappy with this decision and Salvador was subsequently disowned. With no true home left to him Dali moved into a fisherman's shack in the small village of Port Lligat, two miles from Cadaques, not from the French border. Lligat would later become the site of Dali's mansion home where he would spend many years of his life.

Freud & Surrealism
It was at this time that Dali came under the influence of two forced that shaped his philosophy and his art. The first was Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious. The second was his association with the French surrealists, a group of artists and writers led by the French poet Andre Breton. When Dali visited Paris for the first time he was introduced to the leading surrealists in the movement, but because of his lack of interest in politics, he was eventually shunned by this group.

The Gala Influence
It was also around this time that Dali met Gala, a Russian woman who became his wife and soul mate. Gala served as a stabilizing force through most of the remainder of Salvador Dali's life. Gala saved him from serious nervous disorientation and took charge of every aspect of his existence: financial, artistic and sexual.

With Gala's help Dali became established as a notable painter in Paris. During the 1930s his paintings were exhibited in surrealist shows in most major European cities and in the United States.

Style & Significance
Under the influence of the surrealist movement Dali's artistic style crystallized into the disturbing blend of precise realism and dreamlike fantasy that became his trademark. His paintings combined meticulous draftsmanship and detail with a unique and stimulating imagination.

Dali often described his pictures as ‘hand painted dream photographs'.

Dali moved to the US in 1940 where he remained until 1948. His later paintings, often on religious themes, are more classical in style. Dali truly created a new movement in art with his own unique style. It is his paintings and graphic works which remain the pinnacle of his sweeping importance and mystifying genius. To this day they hang in museums all over the world.

Salvador Dali died January 23 1989. He is the only artist in history to have two separate museums dedicated exclusively to his works erected during his lifetime; The Salvador Dali Museum in Florida and Theatre Museo Dali in Spain.