Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in Figueres, Spain. His full name is Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali y Domenech. From an early age he was encouraged to practice his art and eventually went to study at an academy in Madrid. His father, Salvador Dali y Cusi, was a lawyer and notary, that is, a person authorized to carry out certain legal formalities, especially to draw up or certify contracts, deeds and other documents for use in other jurisdictions. Her approach to raising children was the exact opposite of the method of her mother, Felipa Domenech Ferres. Her father used a rigorous disciplinary technique while Felipa abandoned herself to her art and her premature nonconformism. As a child he was precocious and intelligent but was prone to fits of anger against his parents and classmates. Due to his short temper, he was subjected to acts of cruelty by his more authoritative classmates and his father. The elder Salvador did not tolerate his tantrums and punished him severely. Their relationship deteriorated when he was young, intensified by competition for Felipa's attention and affection. Dali's older brother, also named Salvador, died of gastroenteritis. Salvador Dali believed he was the reincarnation of his brother when he was 5 years old, his parents took him to visit his brother's grave, he told his parents about his faith. He also had a younger sister named Ana Maria. At an early stage in his life Salvador began to produce sophisticated drawings, both of his parents fully supported his artistic talent. His parents built him an art studio in their summer home in the coastal village of Cadaques, where his family often spent time. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay After recognizing his talent, his parents sent him to a drawing school at the Colegio de Hermanos Maristas and Instituto in Figueres, Spain, in 1916. He was not a serious student, preferring to fantasize. He wore irregular clothes and long hair that made him stand out as the class eccentric. After the first year of art high school, he discovered modern painting in Cadaques during a family holiday. While there he met Ramon Pichot, a local artist who often visited Paris. The following year his father organized an exhibition of all of Salvador's charcoal drawings in the family home. He had his first public exhibition at the Municipal Theater of Figueres in 1919. Unfortunately, in 1921, Dali's mother died of breast cancer. In light of the fact that he was 16 at the time, the loss affected him greatly. While Salvador grieved, his father chose to marry his late wife's sister. The act did not improve the relationship between father and son, but Dali still had respect for his aunt. They constantly argued about various issues throughout their lives until their father's death. Continuing, Salvador enrolled at the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid in 1922. He remained on campus, grew his hair long, wore sideburns, and dressed like English aesthetes at the end of his life. 19th century. During this period he was influenced by metaphysics and cubism. In 1923 he was suspended for criticizing teachers and for allegedly starting a riot among students over the school's choice of teachers. He was arrested and briefly imprisoned in Girona the same year on charges of supporting the separatist movement, although he was apolitical at the time and remained so for much of his life. He reappeared at the Academy in 1926 but was permanently expelled shortly before the final exams for declaring that no memberof the faculty was competent enough to examine it. While at school, Dalí began exploring many art forms including classical painters such as Raphael, Bronzino, and Diego Velázquez, from whom he got his iconic curled mustache. He also dabbled in avant-garde art movements such as Dada, a post-World War I anti-establishment movement. Although Dali was apolitical and could not strictly follow the movement, Dada philosophy influenced his work throughout his life. Between the years 1926 and 1929, Dalí made some excursions to Paris, where he met influential painters and intellectuals of the time such as Pablo Picasso, for whom he felt deep respect. During this period, Dalí painted a series of works that demonstrated Picasso's impact. He also met Joan Miró, the Spanish painter and sculptor who, together with the poet Paul Éluard and the painter René Magritte, introduced Dalí to surrealism. At this point, Dalí was working with the styles of Impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism. Dalí's paintings were associated with three general themes: the universe and human sensations, sexual symbolism and ideographic imagery. All this experimentation led to Dalí's first surrealist period in 1929. These oil paintings were small collages of his dream images. His work used an old-fashioned system, influenced by Renaissance craftsmen, which he crafted with strange dream characters that contradicted the "unreal dream" space he created with strange hallucinatory characters. Even before this period, Dalí was a devoted reader of the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. Dalí's contribution to the Surrealist movement was what he called the "paranoid-critical method", a mental exercise in accessing the subconscious to enhance artistic creativity. Dalí used the technique to transform his fantasies and subconscious thoughts into reality, thus mentally changing reality into what he wanted it to be and not necessarily into what it was. It became a way of life for Dali. In 1980, Dalí was forced to retire from painting due to a motor disorder that caused a permanent tremor and weakness in his hands. No longer able to hold a paintbrush, he had lost the ability to express himself in the way he knew best. Another tragedy occurred in 1982, when Dalí's wife and friend, Gala, died. The combination of these two events sent him into a deep depression. He moved to Pubol, to a castle he had purchased and renovated for Gala, perhaps to hide from the public or, as some speculate, to die. In 1984 Dalí was seriously burned in a fire. Due to his injuries he was confined to a wheelchair. Friends, patrons and fellow artists rescued him from the castle and brought him back to Figueres, placing him in the Theater-Museum. In November 1988, Salvador Dalí was hospitalized in Figueres with a weak heart. After a short recovery, he returns to the Theater-Museum. On January 23, 1989, in his hometown, Dalí died of heart failure at the age of 84. His funeral was held at the Theater-Museum, where he was buried in a crypt. On June 26, 2017, a judge in a Madrid court asked that Dalí's body be disinterred to resolve a paternity case. A 61-year-old Spanish lady, named María Pilar Abel Martínez, vouched that her mother had an affair with the artist while she worked as a housekeeper for her neighbors in Port Lligat, a city in northeastern Spain. The judge requested that Dali's body be unearthed in light of the "lack of other biological or personal remains" to be compared with Martinez's DNA. The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation , who oversees Dalí's estate, made the decision, however,the exhumation continued the following month. In September, DNA test results revealed that Dalí was not the father. That October, the artist was back in the news with the announcement of an exhibition at the Dalí exhibition hall in St. Petersburg, Florida, praising his friendship and collaboration with Italian artists. stylist Elsa Schiaparelli. The two were known for jointly creating a "lobster dress" worn by American socialite Wallis Simpson, who later married English King Edward VIII. The Persistence of Memory is an oil painting created by Salvador Dalì himself. In making it, Dali's artistic practice was guided by the peculiar “critical-paranoid” method." This being one of his first surrealist works, Dali was influenced by Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights, which he combined with a Catalan background. This painting it was one of the first Dali paintings using his "paranoid-critical" approach in which he describes his own psychological conflicts and phobias. The painting contains a self-portrait over which is draped a "soft watch". " represent what he called the "camembert of time", suggesting that the concept of time had lost all meaning in the unconscious world. The ants crawling on the pocket watch suggest bait, an absurd idea given that the watch is metallic. These "paranoiac-critical" images reflect Dali's reading and absorption of Freud's theories of the unconscious and his access to the latent desires and paranoia of the human mind, such as the unconscious fear of death to which he alludes. in this painting. Despite its memorable subject and significant impact on the art world, the painting “The Persistence of Memory” is only slightly larger than a sheet of notebook paper, or approximately 9.5 x 13 inches. Many art historians point out that the central figure of the painting is a self-portrait of Dali. However, the figure, which has human features such as eyelashes and a free form, indicates metamorphosis, as do watches transforming from solid to liquid. Metamorphosis is a key concept in the Surrealist movement, reflecting the transformative power of dreams. “The Persistence of Memory” alludes to the influence of scientific advances during Dali's lifetime. The stark but dreamlike scenery reflects a Freudian emphasis on the dreamscape, while the melted clocks may reference Einstein's Theory of Relativity, in which the scientist refers to the distortion of space and time. Pocket watches are not the only references to time in the painting. Sand refers to the sands of time and the sand of the hourglass. Ants have hourglass-shaped bodies. The shadow looming over the scene suggests the passing of the sun overhead, and the distant ocean may suggest timelessness or eternity. The painting, which Dali completed in 1931, has been housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for more than 80 years, having been donated in 1934 by an anonymous patron. Three of the clocks in the painting may symbolize the past, present, and future, all of which are subjective and open to interpretation, while the fourth clock, lying face down and undistorted, may symbolize objective time. The egg she lays on a distant shore is symbolic of life which, like memory, has the potential to persist despite the breaking or distortion of time. The egg also embodies the artist's obsession with the juxtaposition of hard and soft during his Surrealist period. The insects in “The Persistence of Memory,” a fly on a clock face and ants on the face-down clock, variously signify death, disintegration, and/or a parasitic relationship with time. Dali's painting combines three artistic genres: still life, landscape and/2/.