Spanish-born, 1904-1989

Salvador Dali was many things to many people: painter, sculptor, and engraver, even magician. Upon his birth in May 1904, he was, to his mother and father, the reincarnation of his older brother Salvador who died in late 1903; and he was raised under just that premise. Growing up in his dualistic world Dali formed the unique personality that would one day allow him to artistically explore the world of the surreal as no one else has.

In Paris, 1929 Dali made his first Surrealist film collaboration with director Luis Bunel, Un Chien Andalou (An Adalusian Dog) and was asked to join the Surrealist group founded by Andre Breton. The Surrealist’s ideology was based on Freudian psychology, which systematized the analysis of dreams as revealed in images from the subconscious. In 1938 while on a trip to London, Dali actually met Sigmund Freud. Dali later met and fell in love with the wife of Paul Eluard, a Surrealist poet, and Gala Eluard eventually became his wife, his muse, and influence behind many of his paintings.

In 1934 Dali met Pierre Argillet, an event that would change the course of Dali’s life and the art world forever. Argillet was a renowned photographer and publisher, and follower of the Surrealist movement. He commissioned Dali to illustrate many well-known literary works, and take as inspiration other subjects such as Greek mythology.

The encounter of Pierre Argillet and Salvador Dali developed into a long and fruitful collaboration. In order to further disseminate the Surrealist attitude, Argillet commissioned Dali to illustrate many of the classical and avant garde texts that fascinated him. The collaboration produced nearly 200 original prints illustrating texts such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749-1832) Faust: La Nuit de Walpurgis, Pierre de Ronsard’s (1524-1585) Poemes and Les Amours de Cassandre, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s (1836-1895) Venus aux Fourrures, Guillaume Appollinaire’s (1880-1918) Poemes Secrets, and Mao Tse-Tung’s (1893-1976) Poemes. Additionally, Argillet published thematic suites of Dali etchings titled Mythologie, Tauromachie Surrealiste, and Les Hippies. Argillet published Dali from 1962 until 1974.

The Salvador Dali etchings comprising the Pierre Argillet Collection represent the highest standards of quality achievable in collaboration between artist and publisher. Testament to their unique appeal is in the fact that they have been exhibited in some of the most renowned museums in the world: 1971-Musee Boymans, Rotterdam: 1988-Musee Pushkin, Moscow: 1990-Isetan Museum of Art, Tokyo: Daimaru Art Museum, Osaka: Hiroshima Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan. The permanent home of the collection is the Dali Museum in Figueras, Spain, and the Musee du Surrealisme in Melon, France, of which Pierre Argillet was the founder and curator until his death in December 2001, a post now held by his daughter, Christine Argillet.

Dali visited Italy in the 1950’s and adopted a more traditional style; this together with his political views (he was a supporter of General Franco) led Breton to expel him from the Surrealist ranks. He moved to the United States in 1940 and remained here until 1955. In the 1960’s Dali experimented with Pop Art, as well as Abstract Impressionism, which eventually culminated in the stereoscopic paintings and holographs of the 1970’s. In 1970, Dali and Gala parted ways and he gave her the Castle Pubol and only visited her with written invitation. In 1982, Gala died at the age of 88. With his muse gone, Dali no longer had the desire to create and only made a handful of paintings and prints. Before dying of heart failure in 1989, Dali lived as a recluse in a room adjacent to his Teatro-Museum Dali.