Salvador Dali, was born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech on Monday, 11 May 1904, in the small Spanish town of Figueres, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, approximately sixteen miles from the French border in a region known as Catalonia. His parents supported his talent and built him his first studio while he was still a child in their summer home at Cadaques. Dali went on to attend the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, Spain. He was married to Gala Eluard in 1934 and died on 23 January 1989 in a hospital in Figueres (Etherington-Smith, 12).Dali never limited himself to one style or particular medium. Beginning with his early impressionistic works, greatest inspiration.Surrealism emerged from what was left of Dada (a European movement categorized by its irrationality and lack of traditional values, sometimes referred to as nihilistic) in the mid 1920’s and unlike Dada, Surrealism held a promising and more positive view of art and because of this it won many converts. Surrealism actually got its beginnings as a literary, not artistic, trend in Parisian publications (Stangos, 122). What Surrealism and Dadaism held in common was their belief in the importance of the unconscious mind and its manifestations, as was stressed by Freud. They both believed that through the unconscious mind a plethora of artistic imagery would be unveiled. Both of these , called automatism. The Surrealists also wanted to answer the question "how shall I be free?" and to express thought without any concepts other than the question itself. They believed that automatism "would reveal the true and individual nature of anyone who practiced it, far more completely than could any of his conscious creations. For automatism was the most perfect means for reaching laid his foundation for his own Surrealistic art in his youth through his ‘critical paranoia’ method. This contribution of his was an alternate manner in which to ...
