Spanish painter. Simple agitator in search of success society men or artist authenticates in one century of pretenses, El Salvador Dalí does not cease causing the polemic: this painter, engraver, sculptor, scenario writer and poet, to which the multiform work, marked by surrealism, testifies to a rare technical control to the XX ^E century.

The success whose painter enjoys alive sound made only increase after its death, in 1989: the “theater-museum” which is devoted to him to Figueras - and which it itself had organized - is the second of Spain by the frequentation, just after Prado, and the reproductions of its works are sold through the whole world, testifying to a popularity which exceeds the interest carried to the eccentricity of their author.

Born on on May 11th, 1904 in Figueras, “divine Dalí”, as itself liked to be called, is a Catalan resulting from a middle-class and easy family, that it was often rained to shock. His/her father, notary, seem to have seen it of an evil eye moving, very early, towards an artistic career: El Salvador Dalí shows itself more gifted for the drawing and painting that for the traditional studies, and it is quite naturally that it enters since 1921 to the Academy of the fine arts San Fernando, in Madrid. It pointed out there very quickly for its capacity to imitate the various styles with the mode, of impressionism to the cubism. Its first known works - the Portrait of the violoncellist Ricardo Pichot (1920) or the Channel of Jorneta (1923) - express its gifts of portraitist and landscape designer. The sitted Young girl seen of back (1925), whose execution coincides with its first personal exposure, Dalmau gallery, in Barcelona, reveals a very traditional control of the brush and an astonishing virtuosity in an artist of twenty and one years. It is the time of its friendship with the Federico García Lorca poet and of its integration in the Spanish mediums of avant-garde.

But Spain cannot suffice for this young man in search of a true artistic success: it should conquer Paris. When it goes there for a short stay in April 1926, it discovers its true vocation in the form of the surrealism, animated by André Breton. It is under the impulse of the latter that it starts to paint strange compositions, born of its interior visions. It makes profitable its dreams to invent irrational and strong images, as blood is softer than honey (1927), surprising table in which mix with the needles, a carcass of ass, a lengthened chest from where runs out of blood and strange figures difficult to identify.

Thanks to its audacities sets of themes, Dalí, according to its own expression, “penetrates” easily in the surrealist group. He discovers the painting of Magritte, De Chirico, Max Ernst, Miró, Yves Tanguy, and binds with the young Spanish scenario writer Luis Buñuel, accompanied by whom he carries out first surrealist film, a Andalusian dog (1928). Work gains a great success, makes especially scandal, because of the apparent inconsistency of the scenario and the violence of images as that where the eye of heroin is cut by a razor. The following year, Dalí takes part in the preparation of the Golden age, of Buñuel: considered to be blasphemous and unpatriotic, the film is prohibited, and the surrealist ones publish a proclamation to defend it.

The years 1929 to 1934 see the first period of artistic blooming of Dalí, which met its inspirer, Gala, woman of Paul Éluard: she leaves the poet to become the partner of the painter, who will marry it - religiously - in 1958. Its strange works however ensure Dalí an increasing celebrity, maintained by André Breton, her principal defender in the surrealist group. But very quickly does Dalí adopt a critical attitude with regard to the movement and, in 1934, because in particular of its attacks against Lénine and of admiration - provocation? - that it posts for Hitler, it will be excluded from the group. It however continues to paint fabrics in the surrealist spirit, to which it will remain faithful all its existence, even if, around 1936, it expresses through its painting an lively interest for the Italian Masters.

In 1940, it gains the United States, where it receives an enthusiastic reception on the part of the merchants, of the critics and the public. Henceforth, it will be one of the painters best paid world, one of most famous also, because of the scandals which it causes and of its successes society men. Dalí, which carries out a luxurious and extravagant life between the United States, France and Spain, is the subject of a true worship. Neither the rumors on a large number of Dalí forgery circulating throughout the world nor its most commercial companies, like publicity for the Lanvin chocolate in the years 1970, tarnish a bright glory, but the painter knows an end of existence obscured by the death of his Gala wife, in 1982.

Among the painters of the XX ^E century, towards which it generally was strong critic, Dalí has the appearance of an exception because it uses a completely traditional technique: its tables testify to a remarkable academic know-how, which enables him to reproduce with its liking all the objects of the world, in a perfectly realistic style. That it is in the ciels, which are useful to him often basic, or in the details of its visions, the splendor of the colors and the precision of the line are remarkable. At one time when the effect of incompletion is often sought, the particularly licked completion of its fabrics aggravated many artists and critics, but it is the proof that painting is not, in its eyes, that a “photography colors and the hand”.

The originality of the compositions of Dalí is due especially to their inspiration. Since 1929, the painter invents esoteric fabrics, like the lugubrious Play, in which one recognizes a couple of in love and fragments with freely associated bodies, on a bottom of blue sky. The reference to topics close to the psychoanalysis is sometimes explicit and Gradiva finds the anthropomorphic ruins (1931) echoed Délires and dreams in Gradiva de Jensen: this work of Freud fills with enthusiasm the surrealist ones then, which sees there an exaltation of the love and desire.

But the capital contribution of Dalí to surrealism remains its invention of the “paranoiac-critical method”, which it defines as a “spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the interpretative-critical association of the delirious phenomena”. It consists in, actually, using in a rational and logical way supposed delirious images to come from unconscious and dreams, like its famous soft watches, its elephants with legs of spider or its deformed bodies. If these inventions were born from the dreams of the artist and are close to the surrealist technique of the “psychic automatism”, the systematic use that makes Dalí of it attests a new and critical exploitation of these data. The original images that such a system causes are then subjected to the control of the final realization and its esthetic value.

Less than no other artist, one could reduce Dalí to his tables. In fact, its creations belong to all the registers of Article One owes him a large number of objects, all more astonishing the ones than the others. It thus produces, in 1936, a Jacket aphrodisiac by recovering a jacket of diner suit of liquor glasses containing an alleged philter. The same year, he invents the Telephone-Lobster, in which a shellfish replaces the ear-phone. The body of its Venus de Milo with the drawers is decorated drawers which transform the statue into ridiculous storage unit - nipples, navel and knees acting as handles. This activity extends sometimes to luxury articles manufactured in series, in the fields of furnishing or the jewelry, and one could see in Dalí plus a businessman interested by the money that a true artist.

But, if Breton, which had finally repudiated it, him finds the malicious anagram of “Avida Dollars”, its inventions, always humorous and eccentric, fall under the tradition of Dadaist revolt. They aim destroying the middle-class or crowned idea “art for art's sake” and at showing that art is a manner of living, which touches all the fields of the existence. Thus Dalí it went so far as to transform itself into work of art, playing of a face reproduces in all the newspapers with the mode, and especially of its very famous moustache. He orchestrates his appearances in public, of which he makes artistic events, kinds of “happenings” society men. In 1955, for example, he pronounces a conference with the Sorbonne, symbolic system place of the knowledge and serious, entitled “phenomenologic aspect of the method paranoiac-critical”, and created sensation while arriving in yellow and black Rolls-Royce, filled with fresh cauliflowers, which he distributes as autographs.

He understands that the art of the XXe century cannot exist without publicity, nor provocation or tomfoolery. But it is not entirely easily deceived, and its writings reveal an undeniable literary talent. Dalí is illustrated in the most varied kinds: memories (secret Life of El Salvador Dalí, 1954), newspaper (Newspaper of a genius, 1964), studies (the tragic Myth of the Millet Angelus, 1963), or articles and poems.

It is perhaps besides in its writings that it appears under its truest face, like an original, inventive spirit of a fantastic and delirious world, creator of a personal mythology near to the madness. It is true that, according to its own words, “the only difference between insane and me, it is that me I am not insane!”.