Salvador Dalí - Biography and Work: The Eccentric Genius and His Formative Years

His precise and detailed technique, combined with bizarre and unsettling images, such as melting clocks and metamorphosing figures, created a unique and unmistakable style.

Aside from his paintings, Dalí also excelled as a sculptor, filmmaker, writer, and designer, showcasing his versatility and genius in various forms of art.

His extravagant and eccentric personality contributed to his fame and controversy, making him a legendary figure in the art world.

Salvador Dalí, the central figure of the surrealist movement, was in fact a brilliant genius, from whom modesty seemed to want to distance itself.

Eccentric, extravagant, egocentric, provocative, and polemical.

There are not enough adjectives to define one of the most popular and provocative painters of the 20th century.

Dalí, his work, and his life, confuse the artist and the character he himself created.

At five years old, that universal Catalan wanted to be a cook; at seven, he wanted to be Napoleon I; and at 16, however, his future was decided: 'I will be a genius'.

'Every morning, upon waking, I feel an supreme pleasure; the pleasure of being Salvador Dalí.'

Salvador Dalí   i Domènech was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, Girona, near the Catalan coast.

Although considered a genius from childhood, Dali was never a good student at school.

He would skip theoretical classes and prefer to develop his genius on the canvas.

The artist began painting at 10 years old, and at 13, he enrolled in the Municipal School of Drawing to learn painting and sculpture techniques.

During the 1916 holidays, he discovers impressionism, a style that will mark his painting in the following years.

He starts taking drawing lessons with the master Juan Núñez.

In 1919, he participates in his first art exhibition.

In 1922, a year after his mother's death, Dali was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid.

At the student residence, he lived with a group of emerging intellectuals, including Luis Buñuel and Federico Garcia Lorca.

This latter had a platonic love for Salvador Dalí for years.

At this time, he inclined towards the cubism of Gris and the metaphysical painting of Giorgio de Chirico.

In 1925, he holds his first solo exhibition in Barcelona.

In 1926, the artist was expelled from the Academy for refusing to take the final oral exam, on the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael.

He was arrogant and said at the time that he would not take the exam because he knew more about the artist than the examiners themselves.

During his years in Madrid, Dalí read The Interpretation of Dreams, by Sigmund Freud.

He became interested in the development of personality according to the psychosexual stages (oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital), reflected in the artist's painting from 1927 onwards.

Since then, he has traveled extensively and made his first visit to Paris in 1928, where he met the surrealists.

He conceived his first surrealist painting: The Gloomy Game.

He premiered Un Chien Andalou, a film he made with Buñuel.

To understand the rest of this journey, continue reading our next article: Salvador Dalí - Biography and Work: The Surrealist Era and the Partnership with Gala.