El Salvador Dali was a painter of dreams, making them vibrantly real and true to life. Dali's art will forever be the epitome of surrealist painting. He even said himself, "Le Surrealisme...c'est moi!" (Surrealism...it's me!) (Bogehold, 182). Dali's career was filled with insanities, love and most of all art. His style was new to the world. His imagination exuberant. From a small art school in Spain all the way to exhibitions all over the world, he had great success by shocking viewers.

Dali was born May 11, 1904, to Salvador Dali (Sr.), and Felipa Domenech. Both of his parents were successful, and as a result Dali was spoiled as a child. His childhood made him accustomed to many things, especially getting his own way. His name, Salvador, had first been given to a brother who died a few years earlier at the age of seven from meningitis. Perhaps because of that death, his parents lavished upon him an overbearing love that brought about his flamboyant personality (Descharmes, 12). Dali went as far to see himself as the ghost of his dead brother, who later became a subject of his art. At the age of ten, when he became aquatinted with the artwork of a friend of his family,

Ramon Pichot, an artist influenced by French Impressionism. At the age of ten, Dali went to study at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid. During one of his first drawing courses, he would do exactly the opposite of what he was taught, oftentimes creating uproar in the classroom. There, Dali painted landscapes of the Ampurdan plain of Spain and cubist works modeled after Picasso, one of his earliest mentors. His development of precision drawing and composition skills were developed during this time. He was later expelled due to the charge of inciting a student rebellion against school authorities, just the beginnings of his nature to shock.

Common themes present in Dali's work are melting clocks, his wife Gala, "soft" faces (a self-portrait of himself), and body parts held up by wooden prongs. Melted clocks are Dali's interpretation of death, the most evident in his painting The Persistence of Memory, one of his most famous paintings. Painted in 1931, it represents Dali's memories of Spain represented by the cliffs. The clocks are all around him, even one resting on his melted soft face showing his fear, and yet, acceptance of his own death. The reason that it is so striking is that there is chaos surrounded by the clam background.

After Gala's death, Dali was plunged into a deep depression. He tried to commit suicide by dehydration, but claimed he was only trying to "return to a pupal state" (Descharmes, 200) to assure immortality. From that day on, Dali was forced to be fed through a tube until his death, January 23, 1989 from heart failure.

Museum. 3 January 2000. 2pp. .

Prominent colors in Dali's were bright reds, blues and yellows, oranges. These colors reveal the vibrancy of his imagination and his need to paint his living dreams. In Dali's bread stage (where he painted nothing but bread in baskets, often times suggestive), it was the scene of bread against a stark black background.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1368
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)