Artist Bio: Salvador Dali

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech Marqués de Dalí de Pubol, known famously as Salvador Dali, was born May 11, 1904  in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. He had a long, experimental art career that earned him many fans, critics, and fame before his death on January 23, 1989. 

In his early life, Salvador shared a close bond with his art-supportive mother, Felipa Domenech Ferres. His father worked as a lawyer to support Salvador's mother and sister, Anna Marie. It is a common belief that Salvador was named after a deceased older brother, and that the artist believed himself to be a reincarnation of his sibling. 

Salvador's life was flipped upside down when his mother died of breast cancer. He was only sixteen at the time. During the next four years, and now lacking his mother's support, Salvador would be forced to interact more with his father. There was such high tensions between the two men that when Salvador finally moved out of his father's home, and into the dorms at Real Academia de Bellas Artes, he set up an art gallery devoted to socially stabbing his father. One of the most noted pieces from this display was a painting of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with the words "Sometimes, I spit on my mother's portrait for fun." carved into the frame. 

It is also known that this was about the time Salvador started branching out socially. During most of his stay at the university, he roomed with another aspiring artist that Salvador was quite fond of. That artist's name was Pablo Picasso. Together the two artists pioneered the painting technique called Cubism and shared surrealist ideas and approaches to their artwork. Salvador's art took off once he'd left the art academy. This is due to the fact that it was shortly after his leaving that he met his future wife, and muse, Gala. 

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