Always surrounded by controversy (and even after his death), Salvador Dali was not only a great artist and the most famous follower of surrealism in painting. The Spanish artist was an incredibly outstanding person. He is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable artists in history.
Salvador Dali was born in the Catalan city of Figueres in 1904 and died on January 23, 1989. Over 84 years of his life, he managed to become one of the most famous and intriguing personalities of the 20th century. His extravagant personality attracted many, but Dali was more than his surrealistic paintings and curious mustache.
He left behind not only a huge creative legacy, but also a lot of rumors and conflicting legends. His life was bright, strange and incomprehensible, however, like his paintings, which amaze, delight, outrage and fascinate to this day.
Introducing the 10 most interesting facts about Salvador Dali that you may not have known about.
10. He (inadvertently) turned his secretaries into millionaires
Dali did not pay the salaries of the women who worked for him, but offered them small commissions, which they barely had enough to pay the rent. However, after leaving his posts many of them received well-paid jobs thanks to their work with the great artist.
9. Salvador is actually his brother’s name
On August 1, 1903, about 9 months before the birth of Salvador Dali, his brother, also called Salvador, died of gastrointestinal complications at the age of less than 2 years. When the artist was born, his parents decided to use the name of their deceased son and assured little Dali that he was the reincarnation of his older brother.
It is believed that Dali's eccentric and narcissistic behavior is due to the fact that he wanted to show by any means that he was different from his late brother.
This event greatly influenced the life and work of the artist. Even in 1963, he made a portrait of his dead brother. Since 2013, he has been at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.
8. Dali was expelled from art school
The surrealist author refused to pass the final exam for his degree on the grounds that not one of the school’s teachers was “competent to judge him“. Nevertheless, they say that the reasons for such a decision were more economic than ideological, since his father's financial assistance would cease to come to him as soon as he received a diploma, and Dali planned to leave for Paris to continue his studies at the expense of his ancestor.
7. Loved the cinema
The eccentric artist was not limited to painting. In fact, he was a theorist, director, screenwriter, stage designer and actor in numerous audiovisual projects. He was one of the first to use the potential of cinema as a powerful media.
One of his first projects was the film “Chaos and Creation”, in which he participated with his friend and photographer Philippe Halsman. One of his most famous works is “Andalusian Dog” - a surreal short filmwhich he did not without the help of Luis Bunuel.
In 1946, Walt Disney and Salvado Dali signed a contract to create an animated short film called “Fate”. It dealt with the importance of time in anticipation of fate. Mexican composer Armando Dominguez performed the music for this short film, and the song was performed by Mexican singer Dora Luz. However, the project was never completed then, and only in 2003 Disney finished it with Dali's original sketches.
In 1955, Dali was commissioned to portray Lawrence Olivier for the poster of the film “Richard III,” in which he played the role of the protagonist. However, the poster was never completed, since Dali refused to paint it in England, where the film studio was located. For him, this country was "the most unpleasant place in the world", So he decided to return to Spain to finish his work.
However, the final version of the poster was considered too valuable to be transported, and he remained at the airport in Barcelona. In the end, the poster had no commercial use (to the chagrin of director Alexander Korda), and Dali eventually presented it to Olivier.
6. He nearly choked in a diver suit
During the London International Surrealistic Exhibition in 1936, Dali spoke to a large crowd of people with a lecture in an old diving suit, with which he wanted to portray "its existence on the seabed of the subconscious».
In the middle of the act, the artist began to exaggerate gesticulate that those present did not quite like it. However, the unnatural grimaces and gestures of the Catalan were caused by a lack of air. He almost drowned!
Fortunately, the poet David Gascoigne, also present at the lecture, came to the aid of the artist with the costume key when Dali was already on the verge of fainting.
5. Dali was a big fan of cauliflower
In December 1955, Dali surprised the world by filling 500 kg of cauliflower with a white Rolls Royce Phantom II. Then he drove this car from Spain to Paris.
«It all ends with cauliflower! ” - the surreal genius told the press when he was asked about the strange action. He later added that his attraction to cauliflower was associated with “logarithmic curve».
4. At Dali, a wild animal lived at home
As a pet, Salvador Dali kept a real ocelot at home. In the 60s, the artist traveled the world with his inseparable Babu, an impressive feline creature that he carried with him even to restaurants. When visitors expressed their fear of a wild animal, Dali very calmly explained to them that Babu was nothing more than an ordinary cat, which he painted in pop art design.
3. He married the wife of his friend
Dali met his wife Gala when she was still married to his friend, the French poet Paul Eluard. Fortunately for the artist, his colleague did not take the news about the novel of his wife and Salvador Dali negatively (on the contrary, he even became a witness at their wedding), but his father, who did not approve of the fact that Gala was already a mother by that time, ten years older than Dali, he decided to deprive his son of an inheritance.
Gala was a great love and muse of Dali, although there have always been rumors about her unfaithfulness to the artist. In 1969, Dali even bought a castle for his beloved wife, in which she could freely spend time with her lovers. As the press reported, she allowed Dali to visit her only by written invitation.
2. His mother died when he was 16 years old
In February 1921, Dali's mother died of breast cancer.. The artist himself later called this event the biggest blow in his life. Soon his father married his late wife's sister, that is, Aunt Dali, although this did not seem to upset the artist himself.
1. Modesty was not his main virtue
Once the artist participated in the What’s My Line contest, in which participants with blindfolds had to guess the personality of the star guest by asking him questions.
The disrespectful artist showed his most egocentric and, I must say, funny side, saying that he was both a writer, a television person, an athlete and a cartoonist. Of course, his dubious answers only confused the participants, and even the leading John Daily had to intervene to restore order.