When Salvador Dali was born in 1904 in Figueras, Spain,he was actually the third Salvador Dali. His father was named Salvador, and he had an older brother, who had died 9 months before Dali’s own birth. Because of the incredibly coincidental① dates between the death of the first child and the birth of the second, Salvador Dali’s parents chose to look at the second son as a reincarnation② of the first.
Salvador Dali was actually told that he was the reincarnation of his dead brother, and Dali himself admitted that the ghostly memory of this lost sibling was to haunt him for the rest of his life. He said in several of his writings that the dualistic③ stresses imposed upon him, that of living both as himself, and his dead brother, caused in him a particular obsession with decay and putrefaction. This is where many of his disturbing images like decaying corpses, insects began forming.
In addition, Dali was teased by the local schoolchildren, who often threw insects, especially grasshoppers at him. The grasshopper became a distinct symbol of revulsion and horror for Dali, especially during his Surrealist period. Thus it can be said that the events of Dali’s first 7 years of life profoundly influenced his psyche and thus his destiny.
Dali began painting in earnest at about the age of 10. Most of the works done by Dali as a young teenager were of the landscape surrounding Figueras. In 1917, Dali’s father arranged a small exhibition of his son’s charcoal drawings at their home. It was to be the first of many occasions in which people would marvel at the wonder of Salvador Dali’s abilities.
At the time that Dali’s mother died in 1921, Dali thought of himself mainly as an impressionist④ painter. Although Dali’s father remarried his late wife’s sister soon thereafter, this was a turbulent time for Dali, as he struggled to form his own adult identity away from that of his family, and especially his father. Soon thereafter, in 1922, Daliwas accepted at the Special School of Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving, also known as the Academia de San Fernando, in Madrid.
Once he passed the entrance exams, Dali moved into the student dormitories where he was destined to meet with other great young minds of his time. It was in about 1923 that Dali first started to experiment with cubism, often locked away in the seclusion⑤ of his own room. When his peers discovered him secretly at work on the Cubist paintings, he instantly became of a campus personality, vaulting from standard membership to a leader of an avant-garde⑥ group of young Spanish intellectuals.
In 1926 Dali was expelled from the San Fernando Academy, because of his refusal to take his final oral exams. When told that the final exam topic would be about Raphael, Dali exclaimed that he knew much more about the subject than did his examiners, and thus he refused to take the test. His expulsion adds an interesting twist to his story that the most influential Surrealist painter of our time never actually obtained a formal art degree.
It was in 1928 that Dali first obtained true international exposure, when his oil painting Basket of Bread was shown at the Carnegie International Exposition in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. This photo realistic work is a fine example of Dali’s mastery over yet another artistic style. Painting in the beautiful and so real style of the Dutch masters, works like the paintings of Jan Vermeer heavily influenced Dali as he was maturing.
In 1929, two things happened to Salvador Dali that hastened him down the path to greatness. First was his chance meeting with Galaluard in 1929 in Cadaques. She was at that point the wife of the famous French poet, Paulluard, but as soon as she and Dali met, they became inseparable⑦. The other important event was that Dali decided to formally join the Paris Surrealists in the same year. In January, he met with Luis Bunuel in Figueras to work on a script for the film, which would eventually be known as An Andalusian Dog. He also had his first one-man show in Paris at Goeman’s Gallery, and was soon on his way to the top. However, there was a price to pay for all this success. Disapproving of his relationship with Gala, Dali’s father threw him out of the house, starting an estrangement⑧ that would last almost 30 years before being healed.
With no income to support them, Gala and Dali moved into a small shack in a small village called Port Ligat, to the north. There they spent many secluded hours together, as Dali churned out paintings which could be sold to support them. In 1937 Dali visited Italy and adopted a more traditional style; this together with his political views (he was a supporter of General Franco) made Dali expelled⑨ from the Surrealist Group of Paris.
