Salvador Dalí was born May 11, 1904 in Figueres, Spain (a small town outside Barcelona). The artist was often told as a child he was the reincarnation of his dead brother, also named Salvador, who died in infancy. This knowledge fueled his larger than life personality and inspired many of his works. As a youth, he experimented with Impressionist, Pointillist, and charcoal styles. In 1922, Dalí enrolled at the Special Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving School of San Fernando in Madrid. During this time, Dalí dabbled in whatever artistic convention piqued his interest. Due to his wild spirit, Dalí was dismissed from school, but his love for innovative art never ceased. He visited Picasso and became inspired by the Cubists; he was fascinated by the Futurist's manipulation of motion; and he studied the psychoanalytic concepts of Freud and metaphysical painters. His personal, inimitable painting style dramatically reinterprets reality and alters perception - embracing the Surrealist technique. Surrealism focuses on the subconscious to generate imagery. His first serious work was "Apparatus and Hand" which contained symbolic imagery and a dreamlike landscape.
Dalí's legacy allowed artists to inject the personal, the mysterious, and the emotional into their work. He unapologetically evolved the concept of Surrealism presenting his dreams and raw internal self on canvas. His eccentric persona allowed future artists to view themselves as well as their works as "brands" - inspiring many people, such as Andy Warhol, to maintain the same personality of his odd paintings.
"The fact that I myself, at the moment of painting, do not understand my own pictures, does not mean that these pictures have no meaning; on the contrary, their meaning is so profound, complex, coherent, and involuntary that it escapes the most simple analysis of logical intuition."
-Salvador Dalí