He studied as an art student in both Madrid and Barcelona, and it was during this time, he absorbed an impressive amount of differing artistic styles and he displayed an unusual technical ability as a painter. Salvador Dali attended Municipal Drawing School to receive formal training and, on a holiday with a local artist, he first discovered modern painting.
In 1921, his mother died of cancer when he was only 16. After her death, Dali's father married his dead wife's sister. This was a marriage which Dali resented.
Soon after this, Dali moved to Madrid to study art at the Academia de San Fernando. It was here that Dali started to be recognised for his eccentric appearance – he had long hair, sideburns and a dress sense that was fashionable more than 100 years earlier. Apart form his appearance - it was his interpretation of Cubism that was starting to make people take notice of him.
Towards the end of the 1920's Dali discovered Sigmund Freud's teachings on the erotic significance of the subconscious imagery and he also began an affiliation with the Surrealist movement in Paris. This was a group of artists and writers who sought to establish "the greater reality" of man's subconscious over his reason.
To bring up images from his subconscious mind, Dalí began to induce hallucinatory states in himself by a process he described as "paranoiac critical."
After discovering this method, Dali's painting style matured with incredible speed, and, between the years 1929 to 1937, he produced the world famous paintings that made him the world's best-known Surrealist artist. Dali was expelled from the Academy for declaring that no one in the faculty was competent enough to mark him, and he made his way to Paris, where he studied with the artist he revered most – Pablo Picasso. During this time, Dali furiously experienced all influences in a bid to find and create his own style, producing works that ranged from classic to the most cutting edge and avant-garde. Using bizarre dream imagery to create unforgettable and unmistakable landscapes of his inner world, his most famous work is The Persistence Of Memory.
In 1929, along with Spanish film maker, Luis Bunuel, Dali created the short film 'Un Chien Andalou' and it was here he met his muse and future wife, Gala, whom he would marry five years later. He also had important exhibitions of his wok and officially joined the Surrealist group in Paris.
It was with this group that Dali started to have political conflicts with as Franco came into power during the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. These conflicts eventually lead to the anarcho-monarchistic Dali being officially expelled from the predominantly Marxist Surrealists. After a bitter war of words in which Andre Breton coined the anagram of Dali's name of "Avida Dollars", meaning eager for dollars, Dali proclaimed "The only difference between me and the Surrealists is that I am a Surrealist".
Dali was also famous for his bizarre quotations such as –and "At the age of six, I wanted to be a chef. At the age of seven, I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambitions have continued to grow at the same rate ever since."
Salvador Dalí died of heart failure on January 23, 1989, at the age of 84 at Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. He is buried in the crypt of his Teatro Museo in Figueres.