Salvador Dalí Timeline

Salvador Dalí 39

1903 The first Salvador dies Nine months before he was born His parents gave the second son the dead brother's name and took him to the grave. Dalí said he spent his life proving he was not a ghost.
1904 Salvador Dalí born in Figueres 11 May, in Catalonia Son of a prosperous notary in a small town near the French border. He lived within a few miles of it for most of his life.
1921 His mother dies Breast cancer — he was sixteen Dalí called it the greatest blow of his life. His father later married her sister, which the son never accepted.
1922 – 1926 The Residencia de Estudiantes Where he meets Lorca and Buñuel The Madrid hall of residence put three of the century's most inventive Spaniards in adjoining rooms. Dalí arrived with long hair and sideburns and was treated as an eccentric even there.
1925 – 1928 Federico García Lorca An intense and unequal friendship Lorca was in love with him. Dalí said he refused him but was flattered, and the break between them left marks on both their work.
1926 Expelled from the Academy He refused to be examined Dalí told the panel at San Fernando that none of them was competent to judge him, and walked out. He never took a formal qualification.
1926 First trip to Paris He meets Picasso Dalí said he went to Picasso before going to the Louvre, and told him so. Picasso showed him around his studio without saying much.
1929 Dalí joins the Surrealists Meets Gala — his lifelong muse and wife Dalí joined the Surrealist group in Paris in 1929 and met Elena Dmitrievna Diakonova, known as Gala, who was then married to poet Paul Éluard. Gala became his muse, business manager and wife, and appears in many of his works.
1929 Disowned by his father Over Gala and a scandalous inscription His father threw him out and cut him off. Dalí later shaved his head and buried the hair on the beach.
1929 Meets Gala Then married to Paul Éluard She came to Cadaqués with her husband and left with Dalí. She managed his career, his money and his output for the next fifty-three years.
1929 Un Chien Andalou Written with Buñuel from two dreams Seventeen minutes with no narrative logic and an opening shot that people still cannot watch. It made both men famous in Paris overnight.
1930 Buys the hut at Port Lligat A one-room fisherman's shack Extended piece by piece over forty years into a labyrinth of connected cottages. The bay behind it appears in the background of dozens of paintings.
1930 L'Âge d'Or is banned Riots at the Paris premiere Far-right groups attacked the cinema and slashed the Surrealist paintings in the lobby. The film was prohibited in France for half a century.
1930 The paranoiac-critical method Systematised irrationality Dalí's technique for inducing hallucinatory double images — a rock that is also a face, a bowl of fruit that is also a dog. He described it as a spontaneous method of irrational knowledge.
1931 The Persistence of Memory painted Melting clocks — the image that defined Surrealism Dalí painted The Persistence of Memory in 1931, inspired — he claimed — by a melting piece of Camembert cheese. The small canvas (24 × 33 cm) with its iconic melting watches became the defining image of Surrealism. It hangs in MoMA.
1934 Dalí arrives in New York The showman takes America by storm Dalí arrived in New York in 1934 for his first American exhibition, descending the gangplank carrying a loaf of bread two metres long. His theatrical self-promotion made him a celebrity and the most famous living artist.
1934 Marries Gala A civil ceremony in Paris They married quietly the same year he first sailed for New York. A church wedding followed twenty-four years later.
1936 Nearly suffocates in a diving suit The London Surrealist exhibition Dalí lectured in a deep-sea diving helmet to show he was plunging into the subconscious. The bolts jammed and he had to be freed with a spanner.
1936 Soft Construction with Boiled Beans Premonition of Civil War A body tearing itself apart, painted months before the war began. Dalí said the beans were there because such savagery could not happen without something to digest.
1938 Meets Sigmund Freud in London Freud changes his mind about Surrealists Dalí sketched him while they talked. Freud wrote afterwards that until then he had considered Surrealists complete fools, and that this young Spaniard had altered his view.
1939 Dream of Venus A pavilion at the New York World's Fair An underwater funhouse with live performers. The organisers censored his designs and Dalí responded with a printed manifesto on the rights of imagination.
1939 Expelled from the Surrealists André Breton denounces him Dalí was expelled from the Surrealist movement in 1939 by André Breton, who rearranged the letters of his name to spell "Avida Dollars" (greedy for dollars), accusing him of commercialism and fascist sympathies.
1940 – 1948 Wartime exile in America Eight years in the USA Dalí and Gala lived in the United States from 1940 to 1948, escaping World War II in Europe. During this period he designed theatre sets, worked with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney, and developed his nuclear mysticism style.
1941 Retrospective at MoMA Aged thirty-seven A major museum survey shared with Miró that fixed his reputation in America just as his standing among the Surrealists collapsed.
1942 The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí An autobiography at thirty-seven Written in exile and largely unreliable. George Orwell reviewed it as the record of a man with a diseased mind and undeniable gifts.
1945 Hiroshima and nuclear mysticism The atom rearranges his painting After the bomb Dalí began painting matter as suspended, separated particles — objects floating apart, refusing to touch.
1945 Spellbound The dream sequence for Hitchcock Dalí designed eyes on curtains and a room of impossible angles. Most of what he shot was cut, and only a couple of minutes survive in the film.
1946 Destino with Walt Disney Shelved for fifty-seven years Dalí and the Disney studio developed a short animated film that ran out of money after eight months. It was finally completed and released in 2003.
1949 The Madonna of Port Lligat Shown privately to the Pope Dalí obtained an audience with Pius XII to present the painting, with Gala's face as the Virgin, and returned to Catholicism on his own idiosyncratic terms.
1951 Christ of Saint John of the Cross The crucifixion seen from above No nails, no blood, the cross hanging over the bay at Port Lligat. Bought by Glasgow for a sum the city was criticised for at the time and has profited from ever since.
1954 Corpus Hypercubus Christ on an unfolded four-dimensional cube Dalí read mathematics and physics for it, hanging the figure against a net of eight cubes — geometry as a way of painting the transcendent.
1958 Church wedding to Gala Twenty-four years after the civil one Held privately at a chapel near Girona, once Éluard's death made a Catholic ceremony possible.
1968 Buys the castle at Púbol For Gala — and he needs written permission to enter She had asked for a place of her own. Dalí bought a ruined medieval castle, restored it, and agreed he could only visit by her written invitation.
1969 Designs the Chupa Chups logo Drawn in an afternoon Dalí sketched the daisy wrapper for the Catalan sweet company and insisted it sit on top of the lolly rather than the side, so it is always seen whole.
1974 Dalí Theatre-Museum opens in Figueres The largest Surrealist object in the world The Dalí Theatre-Museum opened in Figueres, Catalonia in 1974 — designed by Dalí himself in the ruins of the town's bombed theatre. He called it the largest Surrealist object in the world. He is buried there.
1980 A motor disorder ends his painting Possibly drug-induced tremor His hands shook too badly to hold a brush. Reports of mismanaged medication by his household surrounded the collapse.
1982 Gala dies Dalí retreats into silence Gala died in 1982, leaving Dalí devastated. He moved to the castle of Púbol he had given her, refused to paint, and rarely spoke. He was eventually moved to Figueres after a mysterious fire at the castle in 1984.
1984 Fire at Púbol He is pulled from the burning room Dalí suffered severe burns in a blaze at the castle where he had lived since Gala's death. He was moved to the Torre Galatea in Figueres afterwards.
1989 Salvador Dalí dies in Figueres 23 January, aged eighty-four He is buried in the crypt of his own museum, under a floor slab visitors walk across without always realising it.