Salvador Dali

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali I Domenech was born at 8:45 on the morning of May 11, 1904 in the small agricultural town of Figueres, Spain. Figueres is located in the foothills of the Pyrenees, only sixteen miles from the French border in the principality of Catalonia. The son of a prosperous notary, Dali spent his boyhood in Figueres and at the family’s summer home in the coastal fishing village of Cadaques where his parents built his first studio. As an adult, he made his home with his wife Gala in nearby Port Lligat. Many of his paintings reflect his love of this area of Spain…

Works in the MOMA collection, with ‘Retrospective Bust of a Woman’

Dali, who was born in Figueras, Catalonia, is one of the best-known of the surrealist artists. Dali became affiliated with the group in the late 1920s, but in the 1930s, as the result of his curiosity about Nazism, fell into disfavor with them He moved to the United States and did not return to Spain until after the war. Dalis work was well-received in America. He addressed himself to religious themes around this time and painted some of his most famous pictures, such as The Crucifixion and The Last Supper. Dalis visual language, based on his unique perception of popular images and subjects, carried through to his vast graphic oeuvre. His flamboyance and his unusual business practices (he has been known to give his publisher signed blank sheets of paper) have caused him to be the center of much industry speculation.

The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation is a private cultural institution with the mission, as stated in its bylaws, “to promote, boost, divulge, lend prestige to, protect and defend in Spain and in any other country the artistic, cultural and intellectual oeuvre of the painter…”

6 Works in the TATE collection

Dali Archive