Salvador Dal - Victoria Charles

Born in 1904 in Figueras, Spain, and died in 1984 in Torre-Galatea, Salvador Dali was the painter, set designer, creator of bizarre objects, author and filmmaker who became the most famous of the Surrealists.

Bunuel, Lorca, Picasso and Breton all had a great influence on Dali's career. Dali's 1929 film The Dog of Andalusia, produced with Bunuel, marked his official entry into the tightly knit group of Parisian Surrealists, where he met Gala, the wife of the poet Eluard and the woman who became his lifelong companion and inspiration.

But his relationship with the Surrealists soon deteriorated, until his final rift with Andre Breton in 1939. Nevertheless, Dali's art remained surrealistic in its philosophy and expression and a prime example of its freshness, humor, and exploration of the subconscious mind.

Throughout his long life, Dali was a genius at self promotion, constantly creating and maintaining his reputation as a mythical figure. He himself promoted the Dali Museum in Figueras. In 1964, the great Dali retrospective was held in Tokyo, followed by another at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Tate Gallery in London in 1974, and finally in Madrid and Barcelona in 1983.