Salvador Dali was born on May 11 in 1904 in Figueres, Spain. He was encouraged by his mother to practice art from an early age as he was a precocious child who showed great promise. However his father did not understand his eccentricity and had very little tolerance for an undisciplined behavior. He had a younger sister and an older brother that passed away before he was born. His brother was also named Salvador and his parents often told him that he was a reincarnation of his brother. Ultimately he too believed that theory as he once compared his departed brother to a first version of himself.
He started creating complex drawing and anticipating his needs, his parents built his first art studio in their summer home in Cadaques. The next step in his artistic career was attending the Colegio de Hermanos Maristas drawing school followed by the Instituto. As most artists school proved to be too disciplined for his taste. After all while a lot of people can learn old techniques only true artists can understand new styles. Furthermore inspiration and discipline rarely come in the same package. Salvador Dali discovered modern painting in Cadaques and by 1919 he had already had a public exhibition.
At the age of 16 years old Salvador Dali received a devastating blow. His mother passed away from breast cancer. With his mother having been the bond that united him to his father, Dali now realized that his relation with his father would never again be a close one. However his artistic career was only just beginning. He moved to Madrid where he enrolled the Academia de San Fernando. Although his eccentric clothing and behavior made him hard to approach, his talent raised the interest of his classmates. However his wild spirit got him in a lot of troubles over the following years such as expulsion and imprisonment. He was influenced by a lot of painters and he adopted a lot of signs but the painter he most admired was Pablo Picasso, a fact that is reflected by his works from 1926 to 1929. He eventually met Picasso as well as other influential artists such as Joan Miro, Paul Eluard and Rene Magritte. In 1929 he had his first Surrealistic stage. That was also the year he met his future wife, Dalí met Elena Dmitrievna Diakonova. Se became his muse but also a stabilizing element in his life.
In 1941 he had his first retrospective exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of art in New york. Over the next 15 years he dedicated himself to what he called to be the Nuclear Mysticism period. During his period he painted scientific, historic and religious paintings. Salvador Dali loved art and he had a very natural approach to modernism saying that modernism was unavoidable. Outside of painting he was also interested in sculpture,theater and film. He had a sad elderly life as the first thing to be taken from him was his talent. Due to a motor disorder he was unable to hold a brush anymore and in 1984 he passed away from heart failure leaving behind world enriched by his genius.
