A few months ago we wrote in Peques and Más about the Dalí Exhibition at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. As we imagined, the exhibition was a complete and total success among the national and international public with all ages represented among 700,000 attendees. And they all came seduced by his extraordinary technique, his immortal genius and his ability to provoke in all his work. And the children enjoyed it because many of them have surely felt the attraction and fascination for Dalí and some will mark them throughout their lives.
Salvador Dalí y Domenech was born in Figueras in Girona on May 11, 1904. The moments lived in his childhood and adolescence served as inspiration and basis for the works he did throughout his life. And since he was little he spent the summers in Cadaqués, a fishing town that undoubtedly filled him with rich and beautiful landscapes like the Empordà plain, the Catalan coast full of olive groves, the steep cliffs and the wind of the tramontana on which they recently published a fascinating video linking it with surrealism.
Dalí gave his childhood ambition, exhibitionist character, capricious desires, demand for many pampering and also the need to permanently attract attention. Apparently this attitude was conditioned by the death of his brother Salvador with two years of age and his birth after that tragic moment. Dalí said about this that "they loved him justly and they loved me too much." Dalí says that at six he wanted to be a cook and at seven he wanted to be Napoleon.
Dalí was very early in painting and drawing and never clashed with the opposition of his father, an eminent notary of Figueras with a strong personality. At twelve, and inspired by the impressionist painter Ramón Pitchot and family friend, he enrolled in the drawing class of Núñez, an academic artist who influenced Dalí's painting and in which He learned to experiment and master the technique.
At the age of thirteen or fourteen, he was already practicing with brushes and with layers of paint, obtaining interesting reliefs, although to achieve a greater sense of depth, he stuck stones to his paintings and then painted them over. Dalí's father looked astonished at the paintings that represented sunsets and in which the clouds were pebbles of different sizes. Apparently the stones took off and fell on the table making the father say that "from the sky of our son do not fall but stones". At this age, fourteen and fifteen, his discovery and learning of the classics also arrived: Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Dürer, Michelangelo and Leonardo who presented in the section The great masters of painting inside the magazine Studium which he founded with some friends and that was published in wrapping paper.
So I think that the whole basis of Dalí's extraordinary work is based on his ability to know how to draw, to understand and master the technique, to be free to experiment (at home and at school). And also to be encouraged to create and imagine, to know, study and understand the classics to have a great time the rest of his life living his exhibitionism and becoming a universal artist proclaiming:
Every morning, when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy, the joy of being Salvador Dalí, and I wonder enthusiastically: “What wonderful things will this Salvador Dalí achieve today?”
To end this article I leave a few words dedicated to Dalí by Fernando Arrabal, another genius who also deserves our attention:
"Dalí, at the age of six, when he thought he was a girl, lifted the skin from the water to see a dog sleeping in the shadow of the sea"
In Peques and More | Dalí's exhibition at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid More information | Cultural Sum Image | Lolita
