Salvador Dali' Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Salvador Dali had a life marked by strangeness from the beginning. Born in Figueras on 11 May 1904 - his full name is Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí Domènech, born in Catalonia, as a teenager exhibited some paintings at the municipal theater of his town, receiving significant critical appreciation. Read the full biography

Salvador Dali' Biography

Salvador Dali had a life marked by strangeness from the beginning. Born in Figueras on 11 May 1904 - his full name is Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí Domènech, born in Catalonia, as a teenager exhibited some paintings at the municipal theater of his town, receiving significant critical appreciation. In 1921 he enrolled at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he became friends with the director Luis Buñuel and the poet Federico Garcìa Lorca. With the latter he spent the summer in Cadaqués in 1925. The following year he stayed in Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso, and was expelled from the Academy. His early painting is characterized by futurist and cubist influences, and above all by the work of Giorgio De Chirico. In the following years his artistic and intellectual partnership with Lorcae Buñuel produced works of theatrical and cinematographic scenography, such as the two famous films "Un chien andalou" and "L'âge d'or". On a pictorial level, his attention was soon drawn to the reproductions of paintings by Max Ernst, Miró and Tanguy, the masters of the unconscious translated onto canvas. In 1929 he finally joined the surrealist group and in 1931, together with Breton, he developed "surrealist objects with a symbolic function". But Salvador Dalí's surrealism is nevertheless highly personalized: inspired by De Chirico and imbued with references to Freudian psychoanalysis, it is characterized by a meticulous, smooth and cold technique. In 1930 he published "La femme visible", an essay dedicated to Gala, his wife since 1929, model and muse throughout his life. This book marks a new orientation for Dalí, who begins to combine an almost academic realism with a distorting, sometimes macabre delirium. A few years later he clashed with the surrealists over the painting "The Enigma of William Tell", until in 1936 there was a first break with Breton's group, which became definitive three years later. In the meantime, Dalí had participated in the International Exhibition of Surrealists in Paris and Amsterdam. Between 1940 and 1948 he lived in New York, together with Gala Éluard, dealing with fashion and design. In recent years he had the opportunity to exhibit his works at the Museum of Modern Art together with Miró and to contribute, with the design of the scenes, to Alfred Hitchcock's film "I Will Save You". At the end of the US stay he returns to Europe together with Gala. In 1949 he continued his scenographic activity for the cinema, collaborating with Luchino Visconti. In the following decade he exhibited in Italy, in Rome and Venice, and in Washington. In 1961 the Ballet de Gala was staged in Venice, with choreography by Maurice Béjart. There were many exhibitions in the following years, in New York, Paris, London, up to the important anthology in Madrid and Barcelona in 1983. Seven years later he exhibited his stereoscopic works at the Guggenheim Museum and in May 1978 he was appointed member of the Accadémie des Beaux-Artes of Paris. The following year a Dalí retrospective was held at the Center Georges Pompidou in Paris, which was then transferred to the Tate Gallery in London. On 10 June 1982 Gala died and in July of the same year he was awarded the title of "archese of Pùbol". In May 1983 he painted "The Swallow's Tail", his last painting. In 1984 he suffered serious burns due to the fire in his room at Pùbol castle, where he now resides permanently. Salvador Dalì died on 23 January 1989 in the Galatea tower due to a stroke.