50 Fun Facts About Salvador Dalí

In which Catalan town was Salvador Dalí born in 1904?

He is buried there too, in a crypt beneath the stage of his own Theatre-Museum, 450 metres from the house where he was born.

Dalí was named after his older brother, who had died nine months before his birth of what?

He was haunted by the idea all his life, calling the boy 'probably the first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute'.

What was the profession of Dalí's strict father?

He was an anti-clerical atheist and Catalan federalist; Dalí's mother tempered his discipline and encouraged her son's art.

Two of Dalí's childhood football companions in Cadaqués went on to play for which club?

Emili Sagi-Barba and Josep Samitier both went on to top-flight careers.

After Dalí's mother died of uterine cancer in 1921, whom did his father marry?

Dalí called his mother's death 'the greatest blow I had experienced in my life' but did not resent the marriage, loving his aunt.

At the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, Dalí became close friends with Luis Buñuel and which poet?

Dalí said he rejected the poet's advances; when Lorca was executed in 1936, Dalí claimed his response was to shout 'Olé!'.

Which Madrid museum did the student Dalí visit every Sunday, calling it the world's best museum of old paintings?

He described it as the start of a 'monk-like period' of solitary study.

Why did Dalí's Cubist-style student paintings draw so much attention from his classmates in the capital?

His uncle Anselm, a bookseller, had supplied him with magazines on Cubism; Cabaret Scene (1922) is a typical example.

Dalí left the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1926 at what point?

His realistic The Basket of Bread, painted the same year, showed how little he needed the diploma.

On his first trip to Paris in April 1926, Dalí met which artist he revered?

Joan Miró had already put in a good word; decades later Picasso refused to speak Dalí's name because of his support for Franco.

Dalí's flamboyant later moustache was modelled on that of which 17th-century painter?

He grew a neatly trimmed version in the mid-1920s before letting it become an icon.

Dalí's main contribution to Un Chien Andalou (1929) was what?

He later claimed a big role in the filming, which contemporary accounts do not support; the film opens with an eyeball sliced by a razor.

When Dalí met Gala in 1929 she was married to which Surrealist poet?

Born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, the Russian émigrée was ten years his senior and became his muse, wife and business manager.

What provoked Dalí's father to throw him out of the family home in December 1929?

The inscription read 'Sometimes, I spit for fun on my mother's portrait'; Dalí refused to recant and was disinherited.

After the break with his father, Dalí and Gala rented and then bought a fisherman's cabin where?

He gradually bought the neighbouring cabins to build his villa by the sea, later adding a glass floor to study foreshortening.

Dalí said the melting watches in The Persistence of Memory came to him while contemplating what?

The soft watches are usually read as a rejection of rigid, deterministic time, echoing Einstein.

In The Persistence of Memory, one of the limp watches is being devoured by what?

Ants recur throughout his work as symbols of death, decay and desire.

Where did Dalí first say 'The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad'?

His second New York show at Julien Levy's gallery was a hit that same visit.

Heiress Caresse Crosby, who threw Dalí a farewell ball in 1935, is credited with inventing what?

Dalí wore a glass case containing a brassiere on his chest; Gala dressed as a woman giving birth through her head.

Dalí's response to the 1934 'trial' that nearly saw him expelled from Breton's group was what quip?

He narrowly avoided expulsion after refusing to denounce fascism explicitly.

Dalí delivered his lecture at the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition wearing what?

He arrived with a billiard cue and two Russian wolfhounds and had to have the helmet unscrewed as he gasped for air.

Dalí was featured on the cover of Time magazine on 14 December 1936 at what age?

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) was drawing crowds at MoMA and the Julien Levy Gallery.

Which English patron commissioned the Mae West Lips Sofa and a famous crustacean-shaped telephone?

James bought four of the working phones for his home; he supported Dalí financially for two years from 1936.

Dalí's 1938 meeting with Sigmund Freud was arranged thanks to which writer?

As Dalí sketched him Freud whispered 'That boy looks like a fanatic', and told Zweig the Spaniard had changed his estimate of the Surrealists.

Dalí spent autumn 1938 painting at 'La Pausa', the Riviera home of which fashion designer?

The resulting New York show was reportedly the most popular since Whistler's Mother visited in 1934.

Dalí's Dream of Venus pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair featured nude models dressed in what?

He raged that the organisers thought 'a woman with the tail of a fish is possible; a woman with the head of a fish impossible'.

André Breton's 1949 nickname for Dalí, 'Avida Dollars', is what?

It mocked the commercialisation of his work after his 1939 expulsion from the Surrealist group.

Who issued the Dalís visas in June 1940 that let them escape occupied France?

They sailed from Lisbon to New York on the Excambion and stayed in the US for eight years.

Which writer published a scathing review of Dalí's 1942 autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí?

Time had called it 'one of the most irresistible books of the year'.

Dalí designed the dream sequence for which 1945 Alfred Hitchcock film?

Neither he nor Hitchcock was satisfied with the result.

Dalí's 1946 collaboration with Walt Disney, Destino, was finally completed in which year?

Roy E. Disney and Baker Bloodworth finished the animated short that Dalí and John Hench had abandoned.

Dalí showed a study for his first Madonna painting to which pope in 1949?

The audience was arranged to discuss his marriage to Gala; the work opened his 'Nuclear Mysticism' phase.

Dalí's 'Nuclear Mysticism' fused Catholic mysticism, classicism and what?

The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954) breaks his 1931 watches into particles.

Why did Dalí say the rhinoceros horn signifies divine geometry?

Rhino horns and DNA strands proliferate in his work from the mid-1950s.

Which four-dimensional shape did Dalí use in Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)?

He also used holography, stereoscopy and enlarged half-tone dot grids in his later years.

Dalí used a 12-metre-long baguette as a prop for a lecture in Paris in which year?

Bread was 'sacred subsistence' to him, from The Basket of Bread onwards.

Dalí's recurring elephants on spindly legs were inspired by a sculpture base in Rome by whom?

Bernini's elephant carries an ancient obelisk; Dalí's appear in Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee.

Which lollipop brand's logo did Dalí design in 1969?

The same year he helped design the Eurovision Song Contest advertising campaign in Madrid.

Dalí's gold jewel The Royal Heart, encrusted with 46 rubies, does what?

He created 39 pieces of jewellery between 1941 and 1970, several with moving parts.

Dalí gave Harpo Marx a Christmas present in 1936 of a harp strung with what?

He later wrote Harpo a scenario called Giraffes on Horseback Salad.

Elsa Schiaparelli commissioned Dalí to design a white dress printed with what?

He also gave her a shoe-shaped hat and a belt with lips for a buckle.

Alejandro Jodorowsky cast Dalí as the Padishah Emperor in his unmade Dune, then dropped him. Why?

After that 1975 statement Dalí's seaside house was stoned and he fled to New York.

Dalí arrived at a 1955 Sorbonne lecture in a Rolls-Royce filled with what?

In 1962 he signed books in a Manhattan store while wired to a machine tracing his brain waves.

What was the name of Dalí's pet ocelot?

He also appeared in public with a pet anteater.

In 1968 Dalí bought Gala a castle at Púbol, and from 1971 agreed to visit only under what condition?

His fear of abandonment fed his later depression; she was entombed there after her death in 1982, and he moved in.

What noble title did King Juan Carlos give Dalí in 1982?

It was made a life-only title at Dalí's request in 1983.

Dalí's last painting, The Swallow's Tail (1983), was influenced by the mathematical work of whom?

It draws on catastrophe theory; critics wondered how he managed such precision with a severe tremor.

Dalí was hospitalised with severe burns in August 1984 after what?

Two inquiries blamed an electrical fault; he then moved to the Torre Galatea beside his museum.

Dalí is alleged to have signed and sold how many blank lithograph sheets from 1965 until his death?

Dealers remain wary of late graphic works attributed to him as a result.

Why was Dalí's body exhumed in July 2017?

The tests proved the claimant was not related, and a court later ordered her to pay the exhumation costs.