Concise Biography
1904: Salvador Dalí born in Figueres (formerly Figueras), Spain, on May 11, in the district of Girona in Catalonia, the son of Salvador Dalí y Cusi, a notary, and Felipa Domènech.
1908: Ana María, Dalí’s sister, is born.
1914: Dalí begins his education at a private school run by the Brothers of the Marist Order in Figueres.
1916: On a summer vacation, he encounters modern paintings.
1917: Studies drawing under Professor Juan Nuñez at the Municipal School of Drawing in Figueres. First exhibition, at the family apartment.
1918: The city of Figueres presents two exhibits of works arranged by Dalí’s father in the upper foyer of the Teatro Municipal, which is now converted into the Teatro Museo Dalí. Dalí experiments with impressionism and pointillism.
1919: Contributes articles and illustrations to the local review Studium, a college magazine, later published by the Institute of Figueres. Also publishes Quand les Bruits s’endorment (poems).
1921-22: Dalí’s mother dies in February. He attends the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, and lives there. While there, he meets Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel. Exhibits paintings in a student art show at the Dalmau Gallery, Barcelona. Experiments with cubism.
1923: Dalí criticizes his lectures and is suspended from the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts on the charge of inciting a student rebellion against school authorities.
1924: Dalí imprisoned for 35 days in Girona for alleged subversion. Illustrates Les Bruixes de Llers by C. Fages de Climent.
1925: Lorca stays with the Dalí family. Dalí returns to the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. His first one-man show is held at the Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona. Numerous contributions to Gaseta de les Artes. Receives considerable local notice as a leading young Catalan painter.
1926: In April, his first trip to Brussels and Paris with his aunt and his sister, Ana María, where he visits Picasso and Miró. His second one-man show held at the Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona. Dalí expelled from the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts for refusal to take his final examination on grounds that he knows more than the professor that will quiz him.
1927: Dalí called to the Castle of San Fernando to do nine months of military service. Does theatre designs, including Lorca’s Mariana Pineda. Collaborates regularly on the journal L’Amic de les Arts, in which his first major written work, "Saint Sebastian," appears. Dalí is visited by Miró, who encourages him to establish himself in Paris.
1928: On Dalí’s second visit to Paris, Miró introduces him to Dadaists and Surrealists group. Publishes the Manifest Groc ("Yellow Manifesto") in Sitges, Spain, with Lluís Montañyá and Sebastià Gasch. Participates in the annual International Exhibition of Paintings at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, exhibiting The Basket of Bread, which is consequently purchased. Executes a series of gravel collages revealing the influence of Gris, Picasso, Ernst, Miró, Arp, and other contemporaries.
1929: Dalí first meets Gala éluard when she visits Cadaqués in the summer with her husband, the French poet Paul éluard. She will become Dalí’s lover, his muse, and inspiration, when he seduces her, leading to a break with his father. Also, through Miró, meets Tristan Tzara. Exhibitions in Zürich. Dalí’s first one-man show in Paris, at Goeman’s Gallery. Un Chien Andalou, for which Dalí and Luis Buñuel wrote the scenario, is shown at the Ursulines Film Studio in Paris "amid much scandal and sensation." Banished from home. Contributes seven articles to L’Amic de les Arts, including "Review of Antiartistic Tendencies," a veritable defense of La Revue Surréaliste, in which Dalí takes a strong stand against all academicism.
1930: Vicomte de Noialles buys The Old Age of William Tell. Energetically involved with the Surrealist group and designs the frontpiece for the Second Surrealist Manifesto. Publishes in the magazine Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution a long poem-manifest, "L’Âne Pourri," in which he expounds his theory of the paranoiac-critical process of thought. Writes and illustrates La Femme Visible (published in Edition Surréalistes, Paris) dedicated to Gala. Buys a fisherman’s cottage at Port Lligat, and later spends a large portion of each year there with Gala. Collaborated with Luis Buñuel on the scenario of L’Âge d’Or. This film, which caused a scandal, was shown at Studio 28 in Paris. The League of Patriots and others rioted in protest against the film, destroying many surrealist works exhibited in the lobby. The film was finally banned.
1931: Writes and publishes Love and Memory in Editions Surréalistes. Exhibit at the Pierre Colle Gallery in Paris.
1932: The Persistence of Memory is first exhibited in a surrealist retrospective at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York, first exhibition is the States. Dalí writes a scenario, Babaouo, which was never filmed. This work contains a critique on the cinema and an essay on William Tell. Pierre Colle Gallery presents a one-man show.
1933: Collectors and friends form "The Zodiaque" group, whose purpose is to subsidize the Catalan artist. Julien Levy Gallery organizes Dalí’s first one-man show in the United States, in New York. Dalí continues to collaborate with the magazines Le Surréalisme au Service de la Revolution and Minotaure. In the latter, he publishes his article on "edible beauty" and art nouveau architecture, which revives interest in the aesthetics of the turn of the century. His first surrealist works shown in Spain, at the Galerie Catalane in Barcelona.
1934: The Enigma of William Tell offends the Surrealist group, and leads to arguments with André Breton. Gala and Dalí are married in a civil ceremony on January 30. Dalí’s first one-man show in London is held at the Zwemmer Gallery. Dalí expelled from the Surrealist movement but continues as a peripheral figure. Produces 42 etchings to illustrate Les Chants de Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont for Albert Skira. Dalí and Gala make their first trip to New York, and his series of special illustrations of the city appears in the American Weekly from February to July. Exhibits at Julien Levy Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York is a great success.
1935: Julien Levy publishes The Conquest of the Irrational in New York and Paris. This major essay expounds on Dalí’s , a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge, based on the interpretive-critical association of delirious phenomena." Dalí lectures at the Museum of Modern Art on "Surrealist Paintings and Paranoiac Images."
1936: Dalí gives a lecture in a diving suit on the occasion of the International Surrealist Exhibition in London. Spanish Civil War forces Dalí to leave Spain. Signs a contract with the English collector Edward F.W. James, whose patronage will subsidize Dalí’s career through 1938. Dalí appears on the cover of Times magazine in December, on the occasion of the "Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism" exhibition at the New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Paints Autumn Cannibalism and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: Premonition of Civil War.
1937: Dalí visits Harpo Marx in Hollywood to write the scenario for Giraffes on Horseback Salad. Writes "The Metamorphoses of Narcissus," a paranoiac poem illustrating his double-image painting of the same name. In three visits to Italy, he studies Palladio and is increasingly influenced by the Renaissance and baroque painters. Dalí designs dresses and hats for Elsa Schiaparelli. Breton and the Surrealists condemn his comments on Hitler.
1938: Dalí introduced to the ailing Sigmund Freud by Stefan Zweig in London, and draws numerous portraits of him. Participates in the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris, showing Rainy Taxi, then drifts away from the Surrealist movement, asserting "L’Surréalisme—C’est moi!"
1939: The breach with the Surrealists is now final. André Breton anagrammatically dubs Dalí "Avida Dollars." In New York, he accidentally crashes through Bonwit Teller’s window, while rearranging a surrealist window display. Dalí’s Declaration of Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to His Own Madness published in defense of his "Dream of Venus" exhibit for the New York World’s Fair. Bacchanale, a ballet, premiers at the Metropolitan Opera House with scenario, costumes, and sets done by Dalí, and choreography by Léonide Massine. Dalí returns to France.
1940: The Dalís flee from Arcachon, France, shortly before the Nazi invasion, taking the SS Excambion from Lisbon to the United States, paid by Picasso. They remain in exile in the States until 1948, arriving first at the Hampton Manor in Virginia (the home of Dalí’s friend Caresse Crosby), then traveling between the Del Monte Lodge in Pebble Beach, California, and the St. Regis Hotel in New York.
1941: Dalí exhibits at the Julien Levy gallery in New York, the Art Club of Chicago, and the Dalzell Hatfield Gallery in Los Angeles. His first retrospective exhibition held at the Museum of Modern art in New York, in conjunction with a show of Miró. Dalí’s ballet Labyrinth opens in New York. The Museum of Modern Art show travels to Cleveland, Detroit, and Chicago in 1941 and ’42.
1942: The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, a fictionalized autobiography, is published in New York by Dial Press.
1943: The Morses (donors of the St. Petersburg Museum collection) purchase their first Dalí painting, Daddy Longlegs of the Evening — Hope!. Dalí creates the first series of jewels for the Duke de Verdura. Dalí exhibits portraits of American personalities at the Knoedler Gallery in New York. The Morses attend this show and meet Dalí and Gala. Dalí completes studies for three murals for New York apartment of Helena Rubenstein.
1944: Dalí designs costumes and sets for three ballets: Sentimental Colloquy, Mad Tristan, and El Café de Chinitas. His novel Hidden Faces is published by Dial Press. Dalí is commissioned by Billy Rose to do seven paintings to illustrate the "seven lively arts" for the lobby of the Ziegfeld Theater. Creates a second series of jewels for Carlos Alemany.
1945: Dalí News is published for his exhibition at the Bignou Gallery in New York. Illustrates The Maze by Maurice Sandoz and the dust jacket for an anthology on demonology entitled Speak of the Devil. Paints Basket of Bread.
1946: Dalí works with Walt Disney on an animated film project called Destino, but never realized, with several cartoons made. Designs dream sequences for Alfred Hitchcock’s movie Spellbound
1947: Cleveland Museum of Art organizes Dalí retrospective in which eleven paintings from the Morse Collection are exhibited.
1948: Writes, illustrates, and publishes Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, a pastiche of a Renaissance artist’s manual in the manner of Cennino Cennini, and is engagingly illustrated with mock diagrams. Dalí returns to Spain. Designs sets and costumes for Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the Eliseo Theater in Rome.
1949: Designs productions by Peter Brook and Lucino Visconti. Paints Leda Atomica and his first large-sized canvas, Madonna of Port Lligat, measuring 12 by 8 feet, for a new series of "classical and religious" artworks.
1950: Exhibits The Temptation of St. Anthony at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.
1951: Dalí writes Manifeste Mystique to explain his nuclear mysticism. Paints Christ of St. John on the Cross.
1952: Dalí and Gala, accompanied by the Morses, travel to Iowa, Missouri, Texas, and Florida, where Dalí gives a series of lectures on nuclear mysticism in his art. Exhibits Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapislazulina at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York.
1953: Writes a scenario for The Flesh Wheelbarrow at the Del Monte Lodge in California. The film was never made. Delivers a triumphant lecture on the phenomenological aspects of the at the Paris’ Sarbone.
1954: Dalí works with Robert Descharnes on a still-unfinished film entitled The Prodigious Story of the Lacemaker and the Rhinoceros. Holds exhibits in Rome, Venice, and Milan, where he shows, among other works, 102 watercolors illustrating Dante’s Divine Comedy. Publishes Dalí’s Moustache with photographer Philippe Halsman.
1956: The Sacrament of the Last Supper is exhibited at the National Gallery in Washington, DC on loan from the Chester Dale Collection. A large retrospective exhibition opens at Knokke-le-Zoute in Belgium. Dalí writes the treatise Dalí on Modern Art.
1957: Commissioned by the French publisher Joseph Foret to produce fifteen lithographs to illustrate Don Quixote.
1958: Dalí and Gala are married in a religious ceremony at la Capella de la Mare de Deu dels Angels in Girona, Spain. The New York Graphic Society publishes the first monograph on Dalí’s art, written by Mr. A. Reynolds Morse. In May, Dalí presents a fifteen-meter loaf of bread at a happening at the Théâtre de l’Etoile, Paris.
1959: Finishes painting The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, the first in a series of monumental canvases depicting historical and Spanish myths. In Paris, Dalí presents his ovocipède that he had invented.
1960: Ecumenical Council exhibited at Carstairs Gallery in New York.
1961: Dalí writes the story and designs sets and costumes for Ballet de Gala, premiered at the Teatro Fenice in Venice, with choreography by Maurice Béjart. Dalí gives his first lecture at the école Polytechnique on the myth of Castor and Pollux.
1962: Robert Descharnes publishes Dalí de Gala. Dalí exhibits The Battle of Tetuan beside a canvas on the same subject by Fortuny in the Palacio Tinell in Barcelona.
1963: Dalí paints Portrait of My Dead Brother, which anticipates Pop Art. Knoedler Gallery in New York exhibits Dalí’s numerous works. Dalí publishes The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus, a manuscript in French that had been lost for 22 years.
1964: Dalí awarded one of Spain’s highest decorations, the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic. Publishes The Diary of a Genius, a sequel to his autobiography. An important retrospective show opens in the Seibu Museum in Tokyo.
1965: The Gallery of Modern Art at Columbus Circle in New York holds a major retrospective exhibition of 370 works, which includes the entire Morse Collection. Dalí paints The Apotheosis of the Dollar and publishes Open Letter to Salvador Dalí. Produces a series of illustrations for a new edition of the Bible. Creates the first important sculpture, Bust of Dante.
1966: Dalí designs the First Day Cover for the twentieth anniversary of the World Federation of United Nations Association.
1967: Completes Tuna Fishing for presentation at the Hotel Meurice in Paris. Rizzoli publishes The Dalí Bible. Jean-Christophe Averty makes a film with Dalí called A Soft Self-Portrait.
1968: Dalí publishes a pamphlet entitled My Cultural Revolution, which is distributed to the rioting students at the Sorbonne in Paris, while Dalí flees to Port Lligat.
1970: Dalí finishes The Hallucinogenic Toreador. An important European retrospective opens at the Boymans-van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam.
1971: The Morses open their Dalí collection to the public in a wing of their office building. Dalí comes to Cleveland for the official opening on March 7. Designs an issue of Vogue.
1972: Knoedler Gallery in New York exhibits Dalí’s holograms.
1973: Hello Dalí, a documentary, is filmed in Port Lligat by the British Broadcasting Company.
1974: Teatro Museo Dalí is inaugurated in Figueres, Spain.
1975: The film made by Dalí on tape, Impressions from Upper Mognolia (Homage to Raymond Roussel), is produced by German television.
1976: Starts working on stereoscopic installations. The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí is published in English.
1978: Exhibits first hyper-stereoscopic painting, Dalí Lifting the Skin of the Mediterranean Sea to Show Gala the Birth of Venus, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Dalí discovers René Thom’s work on mathematical catastrophe theory.
1979: Dalí inducted into France’s prestigious Académie Française des Beaux-Arts. A large retrospective at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris.
1980: The Tate Gallery in London holds a slightly smaller version of the massive Pompidou retrospective.
1981: Dalí’s "Art in Jewels" (the Catherwood and Cheatham collections) sold to Japanese investors for $3.9 million.
1982: Inauguration of the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, exhibiting works from the Morse Collection. Gala dies on June 10 at the Púbol Castle. A title of Marquès de Dalí de Púbol conferred by Spain’s King Juan Carlos for the artist’s exceptional contribution to Spanish culture. From now on Dalí lives at the castle at Púbol, which he had given to Gala.
1983: Creation of the perfume "Dalí." The first major Spanish exhibition "Four Hundred Works of Salvador Dalí, 1914-1983" is shown in Madrid and Barcelona. In May, Dalí paints his last picture, The Swallowtail.
1984: The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation is established in Figueres. Dalí suffers severe burns in a bedroom fire at his castle in Púbol, for which he undergoes surgery. Afterward, goes into total seclusion in an apartment in the Torre Galatea, adjacent to his museum in Figueres. Robert Descharnes publishes a study of Dalí.
1985: Dalí joins a campaign to make Barcelona the site of the 1992 Olympic Games. He gives reproduction rights of The Cosmic Athlete for use on a promotional poster. Dalí denies rumors of being held captive in the Torre Galatea. Dalí appears on television for the first time in six years to announce a recent donation of works to the Teatro Museo Dalí in Figueres. Madrid official announces that Dalí has agreed to design a plaza for the city, costing $1.5 million, which will include a huge dolmen.
1986: The Salvador Dalí Museum in Florida exhibits the first public showing of Dalí’s forty-eight sculptures donated to the Museum by Isidro Clot. New York Grand Jury indicts seven people for misrepresentation of reproductions as Dalí "lithographs." Dalí receives a pacemaker after suffering heart failure. Madrid unveils the square designed by Dalí, consisting of his sculpture Homage to Newton. Weighing one ton, it is a salute to gravity. Facing it is a dolmen of granite propped up on three cement legs. Shelby Fine Arts Gallery owners in Albuquerque, New Mexico, indicted on fourteen counts of alleging fraud, criminal conspiracy, and criminal solicitation in regard to sale of Dalí’s graphics. Dalí allows photographer Helmut Newton from Vanity Fair magazine to photograph him in a satin gown. He wears the Grad Cross of Isabella the Catholic and displays the tube in his nose, through which he has been fed for over four years due to a psychological problem with swallowing.
1987: Dalí in extreme depression. Manhattan couple convicted in state Supreme Court on charges of selling spurious Dalí lithographs as "art investments." A Japanese group representing a Tokyo museum purchases Lincoln in Dalívision for $2.3 million. The work is loaned for two years to the Salvador Dalí Museum in Florida. Dalí’s former secretary, Captain Peter Moore, announces the donation of three hundred paintings to Spain. Shelby Fine Arts Gallery owners are convicted after pleading guilty in art-fraud case concerning Dalí graphics. Battle of Tetuan brings $2.4 million at an auction; sold to Japanese investors.
1988: Dalí donates the painting The Birth of a Goddess to Jordi Pujol, President of the Catalan government. The first exhibition in the Soviet Union in Moscow at the Pushkin Museum of Art, featuring two hundred graphic works from the French collector and publisher Pierre Argillet.
1989: Dalí dies of heart failure on January 23 in Figueres and is buried in a crypt in the Teatro Museo, as he had willed. In his will he leaves his entire fortune and works to the Spanish state, with the works to be divided by Madrid and Figueres. Dalí’s sister, Ana María, dies in Cadaqués on May 17. Major retrospective of 350 Dalí works exhibited in Stuttgart, Zürich, and Humlebaek.
1990: An exhibition of over a hundred Dalí works opens at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Dalí exploiters William Mett and Marvin Wiseman of the Center Art Gallery in Honolulu are found guilty in a federal court for misrepresentation of Dalí prints and art fraud. The world’s largest art-scam trial runs for five months before the defendants are found guilty of seventy-three of seventy-nine charges.
1991: "The Dalí Adventure," featuring recollections by A. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, is released.
1992: Mrs. Edwin Bergman donates collections of seventy-seven surrealist paintings to the Art Institute in Chicago, featuring three Dalí works. The Olympic Games in Barcelona renew interest in Dalí’s Catalonia. Meredith Etherington-Smith publishes a biography of Dalí in London. Lee Catterall publishes The Great Dalí Art Fraud, detailing the history of fraudulent Dalí graphics market.
1993: Dalí’s 1951 painting Christ of St. John on the Cross is moved from the Glasgow Museum of Art to be the centerpiece in Glasgow’s newly opened St. Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art. "Dalí’s Dalís," an exhibition of works by Dalí from his own collection, opens in Seville.