Salvador Dali

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Salvador Dali  bigraphy, stories - A Spanish painter and sculptor

Salvador Dali : biography

Childhood

Salvador Dali was born on the 11th of May in 1904 in Figueras province of Gerona. He was born in family of prosperous notary. He was Catalan in origin and supposed that to be a very important feature. Salvador had a sister and an elder brother who died because of meningitis. Later when Salvador was 5 years old visiting his brother’s grave his parents told him that he was reincarnation of his elder brother.

In his early years Salvador was a quick-witted but arrogant uncontrollable child. Once he made a great scandal on a trading square because of a candy. A lot of people and even policemen came because of the noise and they asked the owner of the shop to open it during siesta and give a naughty child a candy. He strived for what he wanted pursuing his own whims, simulated, and always wanted to be distinguished dragging people’s attention. His numerous hang-ups phobias (he was afraid by grasshoppers, etc) prevented him from joining usual school life and make friends with other children. But like other people he needed communication and emotional contact with other children, so he tried his best to became a part of group and as was not able to play role as a friend he was pleased with the single role he could get – a role of a shocking and naughty child, weird, eccentric and always acting in defiance to other opinion. If could not win some game, he pretended that it was actually he who won and behave like a winner. From time to time he started fights. His complexes strengthened as the way the boys treated him was intolerable. They used his fears to scary him, or example putting grasshoppers in his clothes making Salvador cry. He wrote about that in his book “Secret life of Salvador Dali”.

He started his art education in municipal art school. Since 1914 till 1918 he was educated in Brother Marist Academy in Fugueras. One of his friends since childhood was a football player FC “Barcelona” Josep «Pepe» Samitier. In 1916 he visited Cadaqus travelling with the family of Ramon Pichot. In that city he firstly saw pieces of modern art.

Youth

In 1922 he moved to Residencia de Estudiantes, that was a student hostel for talented young people in Madrid. He entered San-Fernando Academy. People called him foppish at that period. While studying he got acquainted with Louise Bunuel and Federico Garcia Lorca. He was very interested in Freud’s works.

Salvador continued learning new styles in painting – he experimented with cubism and Dadaism. In 1926 he was drived out the academy because of his arrogant and slighting attitude to teachers. In that year he went to Paris for the first time where he got acquainted with Pablo Picasso. In 1929 he took part in creating a surreal film by Bunuel “An Andalusian Dog”.

There he met his future wife Gala (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova) she was Paul’s Eluard’s (French poet) wife. Getting close with Salvador Dali she didn’t abandon her husband and had other relationship with poets and artists. It was quiet appropriate in that bohemian circle that Salvador Dali, Gala and Eluard mixed with. Understanding that in fact he led Gala away from her husband de decided to make a portrait for Eluard as some kind of compensation.

Salvador Dali’s works were demonstrated at exhibitions, he was getting popular. In 1929 he joined a group of surrealists organized by Andre Breton. At that period Salvador broke his relations with his father. Dali’s family was repelled by Gala and there were a lot of conflicts and even scandals because of the situation. Salvador once made a note on his picture: “Sometimes I spit at my mother’s portrait with pleasure”. Because of that his father cursed him forbade to come back home. Although the provocative shocking acts by Salvador Dali seemed terrible they should not be took serious and understood literally, not always at least. Maybe he didn’t mean to insult his mother and didn’t understand the way it was actually understood. Possibly he was eager to experience series of emotional feelings stimulation them by that very blasphemous way. But his father distressed by bygone death of his wife (he loved her and kept their days in memories) couldn’t stand his son’s trick and it became the last straw. In revenge for that Salvador Dali send his father in a letter his sperm with angry text: “That’s all that I owe you”. Later being an eldery man Salvador wrote in his book “Diary of a genius” that his father was a good man loving his son and suffering his deed at the same time.