The movement of surrealism cannot be understood without the personal universe of Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). The painter from Figueres (Alt Empordà region) was a complete artist who also left his mark on multiple fields such as literature, sculpture, fashion, jewellery, decor and theatre. He even worked in cinema collaborating with Buñuel, Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock.

Famous due to his eccentric nature and his overwhelming, provocative personality which left nobody untouched, since he was young he was known for his talent in drawing, for his photographic perfectionism and his ground-breaking imagination. Struck since the age of 25 by his love for Gala, his muse, his work stands out for its dream-like character, and a mysterious and unsettling symbolism where soft watches, elephants with long legs, eggs, ants, snails and lobsters coexist.

His creative hyperactivity was reflected in more than 1,500 paintings. His work, with an undeniable quality and originality, arose from noucentisme (Noia a la finestra, 1925) and, after a period with Cubist influence, he adopted what he called paranoiac activity, which would give rise to his most known works: Cistell amb pa (1925), La sang és més dolça que la mel (1927), El gran masturbador (1929), El joc lúgubre (1929), Persistència de la memòria (Rellotges tous) (1931), Retrat de Gala (1931), El naixement dels desigs líquids (1932), Construcció tova amb mongetes bullides (1936), Autoretrat amb bacó fregit (1941), different variations on the subject of L’àngelus by Millet, etc.

His stay in Italy during the Spanish Civil War awoke in the artist a fascination for religious, historic and allegorical subjects: Temptació de sant Antoni (1947), Leda atòmica (1949), La Mare de Déu de Portlligat (1950), El Crist de sant Joan de la Creu (1950), Batalla de Tetuan (1962), etc. In this period, he experimented with visual games (Cignes reflectits en elefants (1937), Mercat d’esclaus amb l’aparició del bust de Voltaire (1940)), which were evolving towards stereoscopic paintings such as La cadira (1975).

After the death of Gala (1982), Dalí left his residence in Portlligat to live in Púbol, where he lived having retired from public life. He is one of the most well-known and admired artists in the world. A large part of his work can be found in the Gala Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres and the Reina Sofia Museum, and museums such as the MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York Nova York also hold his works. Since 2009, Berlin has had a permanent exhibit called Dalí - Die Ausstellung and in 2011 The Dalí Museum was inaugurated in Saint Petersburg (Florida).