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A blend
of reality and fantasy characterized both his personal life and his artwork.
In the Catalonian town of Figueras, near Barcelona, Spain, Dalí was born
on
May 11, 1904. His family encouraged his early interest in art; a room in the
family
home was the young artist's first studio. In 1921, Dalí enrolled at the
San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Although Dalí did very
well in his studies, he was expelled from school because of his eccentric dress
and bizarre behavior.
It was at this time that Dalí came under the influence of two forces that shaped his philosophy and art; Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious, and Surrealism's unconscious dream imagery. It was under the influence of the surrealist movement that Dalí's style crystallized into the disturbing blend of precise realism and dreamlike fantasy that became his hallmark. Against desolate landscapes he painted unrelated and often bizarre objects. These pictures, described by Dalí as "hand-painted unconscious dream forces", were produced by a creative method he called "paranoiac-critical activity". Dalí's most characteristic works also showed the influence of Italian Renaissance masters, the mannerists, and Italian metaphysical painters Carlo Carra and Giorgio de Chirico.
During World War II, Dalí and his wife, Gala, took refuge in the US, before returning to Spain. His international reputation continued to grow, based as much on his showy lifestyle and flair for publicity as on his prodigious output of paintings, graphic works, book illustrations, and designs for jewelry, textiles, and stage sets. Dalí died in Figueras on January 23, 1989.Click here to view some interesting Dalí Links.
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