Biography
Spanish surrealist painter, original and eccentric, truly one of a kind. He imbued
his life with the fertile imagination that he displayed in his art.
The son of a notary, Dali was given the same name as a brother who died at the age
of 21 months, nine months and ten days before Salvador's birth. He was given his dead
brother's clothes to wear and his toys to play with and reminded that he would never
replace the lost sibling. Dali came to believe that he was the reincarnation of this
older brother.
From the time he was a toddler Dali was scratching out drawings. He had the first
exhibition of his paintings at age 14 in the municipal theater of his home town,
Figueras, Spain. Another exhibit followed six months later, bringing critical praise
of his talent. His behavior was not socially acceptable, however, and he often
attacked other kids in school. Although his teachers found him impossible to deal with,
his parents encouraged his attention-getting behavior and approved his narcissism.
By the time he was in junior school he was bizarre in his dress and manner as he was
in his behavior. At 16, he lost his mother who had adored and indulged him. His dad was
already involved with his mother's sister, who lived with the family. They later married
but Dali never accepted the situation.
After he was expelled from school, his dad allowed him in 1922 to enroll in the
Madrid School of Fine Art. Initially a model student, he soon regarded his contemporaries
and tutors both as inferiors. His shyness and fears almost crippled him. Terrified of
everything, he was afraid to cross the street by himself and was completely unable to
face the challenge of public transportation. He could not buy new shoes because of his
phobia about exposing his feet, and he carried talismans to ward off evil spirits. He
was expelled twice from the art academy, first in 1924 when he was suspected of rousing
his fellow students to revolt, and again a year later for refusing to take an exam. He
never obtained his diploma.
While in Madrid, Dali belonged to a group of young Spanish intellectuals and wrote essays,
poems, critical analyses and stories as well as painting. He formed two genuine friendships
that lasted his lifetime; the wealthy and gifted poet Federico Garcia Lorca and the future
filmmaker Luis Buñuel, with whom he made two surrealistic films. Dali's closeness with the
handsome young Lorca was shadowed only by the fact that the homosexual poet wanted a more
intimate relationship than the virginal and avowedly heterosexual Dali was willing to
explore. (Some accounts state that they had an ill-fated and brief affair.)
Dali's early canvasses depict the landscape of the Costa Brava, particularly the
streets and harbor of Cadaqués and the nearby fishing village of Port Lligat which were
to become lifetime themes. In 1927-28 he produced his first dreamscape which would
define his ability to transform the world of outer images to reflect his inner world of
fantasy and dreams. His 1929 Paris exhibition featured surrealistic, dream-like landscapes
and weird images that were gripping and notable. With a personality that was as different
as his work, he claimed that he could remember his prenatal experiences and the
terrible trauma of birth.
He produced many of his legendary pieces between 1929 and 1939. Dali's picture appeared
on the cover of "Time" magazine in 1936 when he was 32 years old. His long, thin mustache
waxed into bizarre shapes became a defining image. He traveled around the world with the
jet-set crowd, living in the U.S after 1940 and in Spain in his later years. His painting
began incorporating a growing fascination with history, religion, and science, some on huge
canvasses, and his flair for antics helped gain an international reputation as a talented,
witty showman whose often outrageous statements could enchant and sometimes offend his
audience. He reportedly once told a woman that he enjoyed eating dates for dessert because
his then-sticky fingers could wax his mustache, enabling it to stand erect. When she inquired
whether the practice attracted flies, he responded "My most paradisiac moment is when I am
lying naked in the sun covered with flies like a piece of carrion." He went on to differentiate
between good flies and bad, announcing that dirty flies "have bellies bulging with mayonnaise."
Throughout his young adult years, Dali suffered bouts of severe hallucinations and hysteria
because he could not find a suitable partner prepared to act out his erotic fantasies. Though his
imagination had no boundaries, he found the physical sexual act repellent, and later in life was
said to have indulged in auto-eroticism and voyeurism. In 1929 he met Gala*, a Russian woman who
left her native country shortly after the beginning of the Revolution. He was dazzled from the
moment of their meeting and so besotted that for their second meeting he designed a special
"Dali uniform" that included clothing cut to shreds, blood-stained armpits and knees and a
noxious smell that he created by mixing fish glue and goat manure. Gala was enchanted.
The summer after they met, she and her husband, the French poet Paul Eluard and their
nine-year old daughter visited Dali in Spain. The poet and his daughter left alone. Dali married Gala,
nine years his senior, in 1934, a marriage that lasted 47 years. She is credited with aggressively
taking charge, providing him the tranquil and disciplined framework that allowed him to mature
as an artist. She was the love of his life, a combination mother-manager-model. She appeared in
many of Dali's later works.
Through his own carelessness, a proliferation of fake paintings attributed to him flooded the art
market in the 1970s and 1980s. His marriage was not without reports of quarrels, and Gala began
spending much of her time in her own country house where Dali could not go without a written invitation.
When Gala died in 1982 at the age of 87, Dali went to pieces. He moved into her home, became a recluse
and stopped eating. He dwindled to 98 pounds and, seemingly determined to die, was badly burned when
his bed caught on fire. On the verge of insanity, he believed himself unable to stand or swallow and
suffered from severe malnutrition. He developed Parkinson's disease and, for the last eight years of
his life, suffered the mental deterioration that is symptomatic of Alzheimer's disease.
He rebounded briefly when there was a worldwide fuss over his 80th birthday in 1984. The last passion
of his life was the museum Teatro-Museo Dali, the very same but transformed theater where he held his
first exhibit at age 14. Dali died on January 23, 1989, at 10:15 AM, in Figueras, Spain.
(*Gala - or Helena Dimitrijewna Djakonowa - is said to have been born on September 7, 1894.)
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What Do You Think?
For this week's feature, we'd like to offer a respite from these heated times and delve
into another sphere for a look at a renowned artist, Salvatore Dali. He said of himself:
"I wanted to save modern art from its chaos and laziness and I succeeded." Dali was a
self-described "enchanter." According to James Thrall Soby, the artist portrayed "the
unreal world with such extreme realism that its truth and validity could no longer be
questioned" (from "Salvador Dali, Pioneer Surrealist, Dies at 84," by John Russell,
New York Times, January 24, 1989, p. A1).
Dali's life events, his personality and his works provide us with a fascinating study;
let's see if we can identify in his chart some of what made him an eccentric but brilliant legend.
- All of Dali's planets except Uranus are in the Southern hemisphere. What does this hemispheric
emphasis tell us about him? What can we glean from the placement of Uranus, a Northern hemisphere singleton?
- Where in the chart do you see his fascination with symbols, talismans and dreamlike images,
his belief that he was the reincarnation of his dead brother, his remembrance of his birth?
Where is the showman with the horn-like mustache who could entertain and sometimes offend
with his antics and outrageous statements?
- Where in the chart might we see his deteriorating emotional stability or the physical debilities
he suffered from palsy, dementia or the horrific burns he sustained?
View Others' Answers
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