Salvador Dalí 1904–1989, Lithograph, “the Christian Knight, Dalí’s Horses,” Grapholith, 1981

Salvador Dalí (Salvador Dalí i Domènech^{[note 1]}), Marquis of Dalí de Púbol, born in Figueras on May 11, 1904, and died in the same city on January 23, 1989, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, screenwriter, and writer. He is considered one of the leading figures of Surrealism and one of the most famous painters of the 20th century.

Influenced by Impressionism at a very young age, he left Figueras to pursue an academic art education in Madrid, where he became friends with Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel and sought to develop his own style amidst various artistic movements. On the advice of Joan Miró, he moved to Paris after completing his studies and joined the group of Surrealists, where he met his wife, Gala. He developed his own style beginning in 1929, the year he became a full-fledged Surrealist and invented the paranoiac-critical method. Expelled from the group a few years later, he spent the Spanish Civil War in exile in Europe, before leaving war-torn France for New York, where he lived for eight years and made his fortune. Upon his return to Catalonia, in 1949, he turned to Catholicism, drew inspiration from Renaissance painting, and drew on the scientific advancements of his time to evolve his style into what he called “corpuscular mysticism” .”