Dalì was born in Figueres, near Barcelona. During his student years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, Dalì discovered the most significant influence on his style, Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, which provided the theory to his “paranoiac-critical method” and he soon became identified as the best-known member of the Surrealist movement.

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Influenced by Impressionism and the Renaissance masters from a young age, he became increasingly attracted to Cubism and avant-garde movements. He moved closer to Surrealism in the late 1920s and joined the Surrealist group in 1929, soon becoming one of its leading exponents. In the same year, he met his Russian muse Gala, who was then married to the poet Paul Eluard, and they began a relationship which would last over fifty years. As Dalì’s international fame grew the artist thirstily sought publicity, his surreal work analogous to his outrageous lifestyle.

His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in August 1931. Dalí lived in France throughout the Spanish Civil War before leaving for the United States in 1940 where he achieved commercial success. He returned to Spain in 1948 where he announced his return to the Catholic faith and developed his "nuclear mysticism" style, based on his interest in classicism, mysticism, and recent scientific developments.

Dalí's artistic repertoire included painting, sculpture, film, graphic arts, animation, fashion and photography, at times in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays and criticism. Major themes in his work include dreams, the subconscious, sexuality, religion, science and his closest personal relationships. His life and work were an important influence on other Surrealists, pop art, popular culture, and contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.

After Gala’s death in 1982, Dalì slipped in and out of sanity, living in seclusion, and in 1989 he died in a hospital in Figueres. There are two major museums devoted to Salvador Dalí's work: the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.