Born on May 11, 1904, Salvador Dali i Domenech would become one of the world’s most recognized surrealist artists. Raised by his lawyernotary father and a mother who encouraged her artistic son, Dali grew up in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, having been told by his parents that he was the reincarnation of his older brother, Salvador, who died just nine months before Dali’s birth. Following the death of his mother to breast cancer in 1921, Dali moved to the student residences at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid. He spent several years studying there and then shortly before his graduation, he was expelled for declaring that no one on the faculty of the school was competent enough to examine him. By 1931, Dali had collaborated on a short film with surrealist director Luis Bunuel; illustrated a book called “The Witches of Liers”, a poem written by his friend and classmate Carles Fages de Climent; met his muse and future wife Gala; and painted arguably his most famous work The Persistence of Memory. He had officially joined the surrealist group in Paris, and was hailed by the surrealist community of artists. When Salvador Dali openly supported the regime of Francisco Franco following the Spanish Civil war, and showed interest in what he referred to as the “Hitler phenomenon”, he became somewhat of an outcast among his fellow artists. Many of his fellow surrealists referred to Dali in past tense, indicating their feeling that he was dead to them. He wrote prolifically during this time, and continued producing his art.

Website: http://www.surrealism.org/