Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali I Domenech this is the baptismal name of one of the greatest artists the world has ever had, or simply Salvador Dali. The first curiosity in his life comes from motherhood, his parents believed that he was the reincarnation of his brother Salvador who had died as a child.

He has always gone far beyond his time, this goes back to childhood where he entered the world of arts by his mother Felipa, where he began to make paintings. His works at that time were with charcoal. Before long, his father Salvador had an exhibition of his works in Figueres, his hometown in Catalonia, at the Municipal Theater that years later would become the ‘Teatro Museu Gala Salvador Dali’.

As he already showed enormous aptitude for painting, his father invested in his son's talent and in this way, Dali began to run Spain and later the world with his art. He went to study at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid to further qualify his talent.

Dali was 18 years old when he went to Madrid to study, during this period he let his mustache grow in inspiration to the painter Diego Velásquez, the elongated mustache would become his identity, a mark that he carried until his last days of life.

His stay studying in Madrid did not last long, as he was expelled from school for believing that the people who evaluated him were not competent enough and for that reason, he did not want to take the Theory of Fine Arts test. Dali had so much talent that the qualification at the school was not essential, this student period even served to meet other talented artists who influenced each other. These days we call this as 'network'.

These various contemporary artists of their time, who also had successful careers, also yielded good working partnerships at some point in history. Luis Buñuel and Federico Garcia Lorca were the main partners during this period, and they also became good friends. As an artist who was beyond his time, both in his works and in his way of seeing the world, at the age of 25 he left academic life and began dedicating himself to his own art.

He left Spain and went to live in Paris, where he joined the Surrealist movement, here we can say that the movement gained its great artistic symbol, he was known as “Master of Surrealist Art” his works were hand-painted dream photographs.

In France, he had contact with other great artists such as Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso, the latter influenced his work, despite having different ideas and following their own paths, this meeting was incredibly positive for modern art, changing the image of how we understand art and its creators.

Some facts mark the passage of Dali in France and change the trajectory of his life. Years after having joined the Surrealist movement for political reasons, he was expelled from the group, the movement's leaders considered him a supporter of the authoritarian Franco regime in Spain. Political issues for Dali were always reserved and he never overtly supported leaders and movements, records in a biography said he was an anarchist.

Another important moment was meeting the love of her life, the Russian Elena Ivanovina known as Gala, they fell in love one summer and never parted again. She was the inspirational muse in several works.

 
Artistically speaking it was his best moment in relation to the creations of works, and his iconic work was painted in this period, "The persistence of memory", this work brought together several interesting points to the connection with Freud in the relation of the psychic world in extracting the maximum inspiration, with Einstein in the relativity of time seen in melted clocks. The inspiration also had something unusual: an indisposition reminded him of melted Camembert cheese.

His works always aroused attention because of the bizarre combinations and turned to fantasy, they did not belong to the real world, but with great technique of drawing and shading they looked like photographs and always with vibrant colors. Most of his works were done in oil on canvas, the canvases were of different dimensions, he had about 1,640 works.

Now living in the US, he took his art and talent to other areas of the art world, was a filmmaker partnering with great authors of world cinema such as Alfred Hitchcock "Spellbound" and Wall Disney "Destiny", designed jewelry for the most famous "The heart that beat”, designed clothes for plays and wrote his own biography “The secret life of Salvador Dali”.

He also designed covers for Vogue magazine, illustrated a version of Alice in Wonderland, wrote a book about his famous mustache and another on exotic recipes “Surrealist Cooking Guide”, created the logo of the Chupa Chups famous lollipop.

The journey in the USA ends and he returns to Spain where he creates the Museu Gala Salvador Dali in his homeland, where his works are concentrated. Years later his wife died, and Dali fell into depression, was later diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and died in 1989, being buried in his museum.

Dali's life was filled with eccentric curiosities like worshiping cauliflower, having an ocelot and an anteater for pets. Even after he died was still news after the exhumation of his body for a DNA test of a legitimate daughter was verified that the mustache was intact.

Another relevant fact was the tribute of the Netflix series ‘Money Heist’ where the characters wore a Dali mask, and after some years of waiting the author of the series explained why the references, the red clothes are related to Spain, the country of Dali and from the series, red is also the color of revolution and Dali's mask was rebellion.

Dali also left some phrases that fit any period of history, here is one of them that makes sense to the moment we live.

“Don't be afraid of perfection, you'll never achieve it”, is a reference about taking the weight off perfection and living in the present moment.