Salvador Dalí i Domènech, Marquès de Dalí de Púbol (born in Figueres, l'Alt Empordà, Catalonia, on May 11, 1904 and died on January 23, 1989), was a versatile Catalan artist who distinguished himself as painter, sculptor, scenographer, writer and theorist. Known for being a key figure in the Surrealist movement, Dalí stood out for his extraordinary pictorial skill, notably influenced by Renaissance art. With a unique and unmistakable style, he managed to forge his own artistic identity.
Dalí not only considered himself a great painter, but also a talented writer and deep thinker. He firmly believed in his talent as a writer, even more than his talent as a painter, and aspired to be remembered as a philosopher. His peculiar personality, full of humor, contributed both to his enormous popularity and to complicating the serious analysis of his philosophical and literary work.
Among his most emblematic pictorial works stands out "The persistence of memory", also known as "The soft clocks", created in 1931. In the literary field, his most outstanding work is his autobiography "Secret life of Salvador Dalí", published in 1942, where it begins with the sentence: "At six I wanted to be a cook, at seven Napoleon, and my ambition has not stopped growing since then".
Finally, his great contributions in the last years of his life were the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres and his own person, turned into a work of art in itself.