Figure 1.--Dali is pictured her at about age 10 dressed in a smock or tunic outfit, it is difficult to tell which.

Spanish painter Salvador Dali was born near Barcelona in 1904. He was a spoiled, imperious but shy boy. He studied at the Academia of Fine Arts in Madrid and later Paris where he became a leader of the surealist movement. His paintings excited storms of controversy when they were first displayed. He came to the United States in 1934.

Family

Salvador's father was a lawyer who was a strict disciplinarian. He was tempered somewhat by his wife who incouraged her son's drawing She died in 1920 when Salvador was only 16 years old. An older brother, also named Salvador, died before Salvador was born. He had a younger sister 3 years his junior.

Childhood

Spanish painter Salvador Dali was born near Barcelona in 1904. He was a spoiled, imperious but shy boy. Salvador was in fact a replacement boy. He was conceived to replace his older brother who had died. He inherited his bfother's name and clothes--but not his exquisit behavior which had become a family legend. On several occasions Salvadoe who here is father say with frustration that his second son would never be like the first one.

One author provides this description of the Dali home:

The black-haired boy king strides through his home, his topaz-studed crown perfectly plazed, his ermine cape sweeping majestically behind him. The grand monarch--a slight dark-haired boy named Salvador Dali--rules under a spacious, upper-class apartment in the small Spanish city of Figueres with absolute power. He enforces his will through violent temper tantrums and chronic bed-wetting. He wears his regal costume, a gift from a favorite uncle, most of the time. The king utterly scorns his own childish dreams of the past, when he would tell people he wanted to be a cook. Now he says he wants to be Napoleon.

What he really wants to be, however, is the Salvador Dali who is loved. Instead, it seems clear to him that he is a replacement for another Slavador Dali--his brother who died at the age of 21 months, 9 months and 10 days before the current SAlvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904.

A portrait of the angeloc looking dead brothervhangs in Salvador's parents' bedroom next to a picture of Jesus. There is no picture of the king, despote the fact that he has been told he is the reincarnation of his parents' first child. "

Childhood Clothes

HBC has little information on the clothes that the young Salvador wore as a boy. The image here shows him at about 10 years old wearing a smock or perhaps a tunic outfit with short pants and dark kneesocks. I'm not sure what color the smock was.

Education

He studied at the Academia of Fine Arts in Madrid and later Paris. He arrived in Madrid in 1921 and it was there that he met and formed a deep friendship with the poet Frederico García Lorca and future filmmaker Luis Brñuel.

Career

Dali emerged as a leader of the surealist movementin Paris. Such paintings would have probably been unimaginable in conservative Spain, but even in Paris his paintings excited storms of controversy when they were first displayed. Dali's paintings used symbols often derived from Freudian psychoanalisis. He treated bizarre subjects with excating draftmanship. He came to the United States in 1934. He left Spain just before the Civil War. His friend, García Lorca, was executed by the Fascists. The same fate may have befallen him. In America, in addition to painting, Dali illustrated books, wrote, and produced ballets and films. His most famous painting is "The persistance of memory".

Sources

Salvador Dali, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, 1942.