Dali and Surrealism Essays -- Painter Painters Artists Art Dali Essays

Salvador Dali was born in 1904 in Figueras, Spain. He had an elder brother who died prior to his birth by nine months. This incident affected him throughout his life. His parents looked at him as reincarnation of his dead brother. He was taken to his brother’s grave and was given free reign of the Dali household which stayed with him throughout his life. Since he was treated differently and in a special way, in strongly influenced his personality. Hence, Dali had a unique and clear character. Living both himself and his brother caused him an obsession concerning decay and putrefaction. This appeared in his paintings in the image of dead corpses or insects. Dali was not a brilliant student, but he was somehow aware of his genius at a young age. In 1917, his father organized his first exhibition. In 1922 Dali was accepted at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. In 1923, he was very interested in Cubism which showed in his paintings of that time (Biography 1904-1929). In 1929, two very important incidents happened to Dali. The first was meeting Gala Eluard, the wife of the French poet Paul Eluard; later they became inseparable. The second event was him joining the Paris Surrealists. He paid an expensive price for both gifts, first his father threw him out of the house and it took him many years to heal this incident. In 1934, he was expelled of the Paris group. In 1940, he and Gala left France only one week before Nazi invasion, and it was Picasso who paid for their tra...