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Structure
Interesting Questions, Facts and Information
- There are a total of 25 general entries.
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 Interesting Questions, Facts, and Information
 Dali, Salvador
Figueres, Spain. Figueres is in the Catalonia region of Spain, near Barcelona. His body is interred at the Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres, a museum Dali himself designed and created. Oh, by the way he was born in 1904, and died in 1989.
| What was the given name of both Dali's father and brother(who died in infancy)? | Salvador Dali
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Salvador. Early in his life, Dali had a severe identity crisis because of this. He was born exactly nine months after his brother's death, and his parents actually told him that he was the reincarnation of his dead sibling. Throughout most of his life he believed that he was only a part of one {personality;} what he called the four Salvadors, his father, his dead brother, himself, and the Christian messiah, Jesus Christ (Salvador in Spanish). This goes a long way towards explaining Dali's eccentric personality.
| Before he settled on Surrealism, what artistic style did Dali experiment with? | Salvador Dali
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All of these (Cubism, Impressionism, The Style of the Dutch Masters). Dali showed great talent in these all of these styles before he was ever exposed to surrealism. Had he died in the late 1920's he may well have been remembered as one of the great cubist painters, on a par with Picasso and Braque.
Sigmund Freud. In the years 1928 and 1929, three things happened in Dali's life that profoundly changed him and his art. The first was that he was exposed to Freud's theory of the unconcious mind, as presented in his book, 'Interpretation of Dreams'. The second was that he met and began working with a group of artists and writers in Paris, known as the 'Surrealists', led by the poet Andre Breton. And the third was ...see next question.
Gala. Gala was Russian by birth and nine years older than Salvador. They met on the beach at Cadaques, Spain in 1929, where they both were vacationing. At the time they met, Gala was married to the poet Paul Eluard, but they immediately started a romantic relationship, and within a few months, they were living together. She eventually divorced Eluard, and married Dali in 1934. Dali used his wife as a model for many of his paintings. A couple of my favorites of these are 'Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid' and 'Leda Atomica'. By the way, if you can pronounce that first one, you're doing better than I can! Gala was a major force in encouraging Dali to establish and cultivate his flamboyant public image.
| Who loaned Dali the five hundred dollars he needed to make his first trip to New York in 1934? | Salvador Dali
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Pablo Picasso. Dali and Picasso were friends on and off for most of their lives. They first met in 1925 when Picasso, already famous at the time, came to see Dali's first solo exhibition in Barcelona. Apparently, he liked what he saw. Picasso also booked and paid for Dali's passage to America in 1940, just weeks before the Nazis rolled into France. During Dali's second trip to the United States in 1936, he made the cover of Time magazine. Incidentally, Dali and Walt Disney did have a connection. In 1948 Dali worked on a series of drawings for an animated feature called 'Destino' that the Disney studio was developing. The project was shelved, however, when uncle Walt decided the tone of the piece was a little too dark for his audience. Bummer!
Franco. Dali was a stauch supporter of Franco's fascist regime. It's interesting to note that at no time during the Spanish Civil War did Dali actually live in Spain, he stayed in France and Italy. If he had been there to see the war first hand, perhaps he would have felt differently. Andre Breton formally expelled him from the Surrealist group in 1939 because of his political beliefs. It didn't really matter though, by this time Dali was internationally famous, and his name was synonymous with surrealism. It was at this time that Breton gave him the derisive nickname 'I'd Save a Dollar', an anagram of Salvador Dali.
| What did Dali wear to the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936? | Salvador Dali
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A deep sea diving suit. That's right, a diving suit, complete with brass helmet and lead boots. He loudly proclaimed that this unweildy costume was the source of his creative energy. Dali was a shameless self promoter, he never missed an opportunity to shock or bemuse his public. This famous incident was typical of Dali's outlandish and eccentric behavior. He was probably more concerned with moulding his public persona than any other artist of the twentieth century.
Spellbound. Dali designed the sets used in the dream sequence of 'Spellbound' in 1946. I don't have any information on how he and Hitch hit it off, but I'll bet it was pretty interesting!
| With what filmmaker did Dali collaborate in making 'Un Chien Andalou' (An Andalusian Dog), and 'L'age d'or' (The Golden Age)? | Salvador Dali
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Luis Bunuel. Dali and Bunuel had known each other since their art school days in Barcelona. I've seen 'Un Chein Andalou', and I must say that some of the images presented are particularly disturbing. I won't go into details here, but let's just say it ain't exactly 'Mary Poppins'. Released in 1930, 'L'age d'or' was banned in Spain for 49 years because of it's anti-Catholic message. It is considered by many film historians to be a ground breaking masterpiece.
| With what comedy team did Dali collaborate on a motion picture screenplay? | Salvador Dali
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The Marx Brothers. The screenplay never made it to production, but Dali remained friends with Harpo for many years after this.
Paranoic-Critical Activity. This method involves entering an altered state of conciousness, such as dreaming or meditation, and then once out of the altered state being able to remember and reproduce images created by the subconcious mind. Dali said that all humans engage in this at some level. It's the same process we use when looking at objects such as clouds, and being able perceive other unrelated shapes and images. Some of Dali's most famous works employ this type of 'double imaging'. My favorites of these include 'The Hallucinogenic Toreador' and 'Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln-Homage to Rothko'. This aspect of Dali's art is what I think is the reason for his universal appeal. All of us can remember images created solely by our own minds, Dali just took the extra step and produced them in crystal clarity in the form of paintings.
1904. Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí was born in Figueres (formerly Figueras), Spain, on May 11, in the district of Girona in Catalonia, near the border with France. He was the son of Salvador Dalí y Cusi, a notary, and Felipa Domčnech.
| Dali studied at the Royal Academy of Art in 1921. Where was is located? | Salvador Dali
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Madrid, Spain. Dali was expelled twice and never took his final exams. His opinion was that he was "more qualified than those who examined him". In 1924 Dali continues hid studies at the Metaphysical School created by Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carra.
| In what year did Salvador Dali first travel to Paris? | Salvador Dali
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1928. It was here that he first met Spanish painters Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro.
Russian. She was also 10 years older than Dali, and still married to Paul Eluard when they first met.
| At what age did Dali have his first public exibition? | Salvador Dali
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14. It was held in a museum that would later be named "Dali Museum-Theatre" in Figueres, Spain. It was organized with the backing of his father.
| In 1949, Dali's sister wrote a book called "Dali as Seen by His Sister". What was her name? | Salvador Dali
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Ana Maria. Salvador and Ana Maria were very close, particularly after the death of their mother in 1921. Ana Maria was his only female model until his wife Gala replaced her in 1929.
| In what year was Dali forced to retire due to palsy, a motor disorder that caused a permanent trembling of his hands? | Salvador Dali
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1980. He was not even able to hold a paintbrush, and with Gala's death two years later in 1982, he fell into a deep depression.
| What is the name of the castle that Dali moved into shortly after Gala's death in 1982? | Salvador Dali
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Pubol. He remained there until a fire broke out as he lay in bed, he suffered severe burns and as a result required a pacemaker two years later.
| In 1940, where did Dali flee in order to avoid draft into World War II? | Salvador Dali
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U.S.A. He became a permanent resident and held many sucessful exhibitions in New York.
Heart failure. He died May 11, 1989 while living in the tower of his own museum, in Figueres, Spain.
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