Dali Paintings

Dali was born to a middle-class Spanish family in May of 1904. He was in fact the third Salvador in his immediate family - his father shared the name, as did a previous child who died nine months before Salvador³ was born, or roughly around the time said infant was conceived.

Whether his epic 'stache was present at birth is unknown.

Seriously. Just look at that thing.

Dali's mother succumbed to breast cancer when the artist was 16. Keeping with his theme of replacing deceased family-members with the closest possible living entity, his father married his former sister-in-law. It is unknown if she received her deceased sister's name.

A few years later, in 1922, young Dali moved to Madrid in order to attend art school, presumably in the company of PBR-swilling hipsters and other people far too old to be wearing pants that small. This was all well and good until 1926, when, just before his final exams, the academy gave Dali the boot, citing "potentially fatal facial hair" among the reasons for the student's forced departure. Of course, the fact that Dali proclaimed no one at the institution had the necessary skill or intelligence to understand and critique his work may have had something to do with it.

Knowing the success that comes with an art degree, it's a wonder

the guy didn't just off himself right then.

Undeterred, the young Spaniard continued painting the fuck out of, well, bread. And other stuff. Also, he would soon meet his future wife, Gala. The fact that she was already someone else's wife did not seem to deter him. Dali's father did not approve of this relationship, or his son's affiliation with the Surrealist movement in Paris, or really pretty much anything his son did. As such, their own relationship was stretched as thin as a melting watch, and soon he gave his son the art-school treatment and kicked his ass to the cold, unfeeling curb. Salvador allegedly responded by presenting his father with a condom-load of his own semen, probably screaming some mixture of Spanish and crazy-bag-lady before disappearing subtly into the background.

It is from around this time that we get Dali's most famous piece - The Persistence of Memory. For the uninitiated, this is the painting you've probably seen on a dorm room wall, sandwiched between Al Pacino holding a military assault weapon, and Bob Marley holding a weapons-grade joint.

Familiar?

When this painting was introduced to American audiences in 1934, it caused quite a stir, and soon he was showing up to gala balls wearing glass encased brassieres. Shortly after this, he and his wife appeared at another ball dressed as the Lindbergh baby and his kidnapper. The public outrage at this act lead him to apologize - this latter act was so egregiously not-crazy it led to him being kicked out of the Surrealist group.

For the next fifty or so years, Dali continued to bring the crazy at levels which should require a warning from the Surgeon General. In 1982, Gala passed away, leading Dali to intentionally dehydrate himself, either as a suicide, or an attempt to turn himself into a giant, mustachioed sea-monkey - putting himself into a state of suspended animation until some child in the future could dump him into an aquarium, promptly become bored, and find something more interesting to do.

Neither of these scenarios actually occurred (although the seamonkey bit would've been pretty cool), and Dali lived for another seven years. Finally, in January of 1989, Dali passed away quietly with nary an anthropomorphic sexual metaphor in sight.

Dali showed an interest in art from a very young age. Like, count the years on one hand young - while most kids were busy figuring out how to tie their shoes or wipe their own asses, he was painting not-entirely-horrible images.

One of these was done by a six-year-old, the other by an accomplished post-impressionist

painter. Either way, you might as well go ahead and get a haircut and a real degree.

By the time he was 13, Dali had begun to develop his own style, borrowing elements from Impressionist and post-Impressionist works. While this differed from the smooth strokes of his adult work, it shows an incredible grasp of color theory and composition, or nothing your artwork included in middle school, no matter how awesome your mom said it was.

Your mother is a liar.

Around the time of his entrance to art school, Dali began to experiment with Cubism, though this phase thankfully did not last long. His style soon began to grow more naturalistic, more closely resembling the smooth surfaces and precision strokes he is known for. A couple of years and two films later, we get The Persistence of Memory, and the beginning of his Surrealist period, also known as the "holy fuck his dick has a dick" period. This would go on to encompass all of Dali's work for the rest of his life.

There. Are. Dicks. Everywhere.