Cheval Vert

11. Mai 1904

Born

6 February 1921

Death of his mother

Dalí's mother, Felipa Domènech, who had encouraged his art, died of cancer; the sixteen-year-old called her death “the greatest blow I had experienced in my life”. His father then married her sister, which Dalí did not resent, as he loved and respected his aunt.

1926

First trip to Paris: meeting Picasso

In Paris Dalí met Pablo Picasso, whom he revered and who had already heard good reports of him from Joan Miró, who later introduced him to many Surrealists. Over the next few years he made works strongly influenced by Picasso and Miró.

August 1929

Meets Gala

Dalí met his lifelong muse and future wife Gala, born Elena Diakonova, a Russian émigrée ten years his senior, then married to the Surrealist poet Paul Éluard.

28 December 1929

His father throws him out

His father disapproved of his romance with Gala and his Surrealist friends, and on reading that he had exhibited in Paris a drawing inscribed “Sometimes, I spit for fun on my mother's portrait”, demanded a public recantation. Dalí refused and was thrown out of the family home, told he would be disinherited and must never set foot in Cadaqués again.

23. Januar 1989

Died