SALVADOR DALI (1904-1989)

Salvador Dali is best known for The Persistence of Memory, his painting of clocks melting in a landscape, the prolific Spanish Surrealist artist was born in 1904 in Figueres, Spain. He studied at an academy in Madrid before moving to Paris in the 1920s. There, he interacted with Magritte, Miro, and Picasso, and began his Surrealist phase. He painted The Persistence of Memory in 1931. He moved to New York in 1940. Dali, like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, designed for theater productions as early as 1927. Later, the extent of his work went beyond creating stage décor and costumes to providing the libretto for Bacchanale (1939) and Labyrinth (1941). A lifetime of relentless controversy and self-promotion, as well as an extraordinary body of paintings and sculpture, assured Dali of what he wanted — immortality, or at least enduring fame that transcends art.