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Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
A biography of the Surrealist Spanish Master Source: Leninimports.com
"Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy — the joy of being Salvador Dalí — and I ask myself in rapture, ‘What wonderful things this Salvador Dalí is going to accomplish today?’" — Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí
Salvador Dalí was born as the son of a prestigious notary in the small town of Figuera in Northern Spain. His talent as an artist showed at an early age and Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí received his first drawing lessons when he was ten years old. Dalí began to study art at the Royal Academy of Art in Madrid. He was expelled twice and never took the final examinations. His opinion was that he was more qualified than those who should have examined him.
Surreal Art
In 1933 Salvador Dalí had his first one-man show in New York. One year later he visited the U.S. for the first time supported by a loan of US$500 from Pablo Picasso. To evade World War II, Dalí chose the U.S.A. as his permanent residence in 1940. He had a series of spectacular exhibitions, among others a great retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1958 the artist began his series of large sized history paintings. He painted one monumental painting every year during the summer months in Lligat. The artist's late art works combine more than ever his perfect and meticulous painting technique with his fantastic and limitless imaginations.
Death in His Own Museum
Salvador Dalí is the only known artist who had two museums dedicated exclusively to his works in his lifetime. From 1970 the artist dedicated his energy to transforming the former Municipal Theater into a museum and art gallery. In 1974 the Theatro Museo Dalí was officially opened.
He moved to Pubol, a castle, he had bought and decorated for his wife. In 1984, when he was lying in bed, a fire broke out and he suffered sever burns. Two years later, a pacemaker had to be implanted. Towards the end of his life, Dalí lived in the tower of his own museum where he died on January 23, 1989 from heart failure.
Salvador Dalí, an example of the best of the Hispanic spirit.
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Salvador
Dalí is considered as the greatest artist of the surrealist art
movement and one of the greatest masters of art of the twentieth
century. During his lifetime the public got a picture of an eccentric
paranoid. His personality caused a lot of controversy. After his death in
1989 his name remained in the headlines. But this time it was not funny at
all. The art market was shaken by reports of great numbers of fraudulent
Dalí prints. 
In 1928 Dalí went to Paris where he met the Spanish painters
Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro. By 1929 Dalí had found his
personal style that should make him famous - the world of the unconscious
that is recalled during our dreams. The surrealist theory is based
on the theories of the psychologist Dr. Sigmund Freud. Recurring
images of burning giraffes and melting watches became the artist's
surrealist trademarks. His great craftsmanship allowed him to execute his
paintings in a nearly photorealistic style. No wonder that the artist was
a great admirer of the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael.
Besides creating a number of great paintings, Dalí caused the
attention of the media by playing the role of a surrealist clown.
Dalí became the darling of the American High Society. Celebrities like
Jack Warner or Helena Rubinstein gave him commissions for portraits. His
art works became a popular trademark and besides painting he pursued other
activities - jewellery and clothing designs for Coco Chanel or film
making with Alfred Hitchcock. 
In 1980 Dalí was forced to retire due to palsy, a motor disorder,
that caused a permanent trembling and weakness of his hands. He was not
able to hold a brush any more. The fact that he could not follow his
vocation and passion of painting and the news of his wife's death in 1982
left him with deep depressions. 