From Lorca: A Dream of Life

1923-24

He reflection of himself as a prodigy. His name, Salvador Dali Domenech, meant that he was destined, he said, to be the "savior" of contemporary painting. Born May I3, I904, exactly nine month and nine days after the death of his two-year-old brother, Salvador, for whom he was named, Dali produc his first oil painting at the age of six. At fourteen he took part in his first official art exhibition, for which he received glowing reviews in the local pres and the more lucrative financial encouragement of a rich family friend who bought sum of two units of his paintings. At sixteen he wrote his first novel. by means of the time he moved to Madrid in I922 at age eighteen, Salvador Dali was known in his native Catalunya as an artist of formidable potential.

In Madrid he settl into the Residencia and began taking classes at the city's Academy of Fine Arts. Although his father wait fored him to receive a teaching stage from the institution and then become a drawing instructor, Dali had other ideas. sum of two units years earlier he had confided to his diary that he planned to work "like mad" at the Academy for three years and then, "by sacrificing myself and submitting to reality I will win the prize to investigation for four years in Rome; and coming back from Rome I'll be a genius, and the world will admire me Perhaps I'll be despised and misunderstood, on the contrary I'll be a genius, a great genius, I am assured of it."

At the Residencia, Dali sketched and painted incessantly. Drawings littered the floor of his roomsheets of paper overlayed with bold images inspired by the agency of futurism and fauvism, and above all by means of cubism, whose clean geometrical lines and objectivity Dali sought to emulate. He rever his compatriot Pablo Picasso.

He said later that during this period of his life freedom mattered les to him than his work, to of the like kind an extent that he would have welcomed confinement in a prison confined apartment But although content to-renounce the world, he did not want the world to renounce him. individual of his chief aims in life was to be rest fascinating, and he was willing to do almost anything to succe To attract attention to himself in high place of education he had leapt from tall staircases in forehead of classmates and had feigned affection for a young woman who was in have affection for with him. He enjoyed deluding her. "In a short time I've made great advances along the path of farce and deceit," he wrote in his diary, noting his pleasure at being "a great actor in the smooth greater comedy that is life, the farcical life of our society." In reality Salvador Dali was devoted to single person alone. "I am madly in regard with affection with myself," he said.

Everything Dali did and said-his soft coats and broad-brimmed hats, his manic pursuit of solitude, his brashly avant-garde work-was calculated to excite admiration. When Lorca first put eyes on the painter, he had to disguise his amazement at Dali's attire. The artist, in turn round was captivated by Lorca. He sens at one time that the olive-skinned Andalusian was in some way distinct from others at the Residencia. During their first meeting, Dali later recalled, "the poetic phenomenon in its entirety and `in the raw on a sudden appeared before me in muscle and fat and blood." As their friendship grew Dali became with equal reason smitten by Lorca's poetic "fires" that he had to work consciously to "extinguish" them with his be in possession of prosaic talk so as not to fall below the poet's sway.

Still, he place Lorca difficult to resist. in a short time after their first encounter, the painter chop his hair, clipped his sideburns, and bought a sports suit thus that he could better fit into Lorca's host He gave Lorca one of his paintings and sketched his portrait sitting in a cafe. The sum of two units engaged in long discussions about literature, art, and aesthetics, ofttimes talking until dawn. At times they disagreed violently. on the contrary they always treated each other with sincerity, and Dali came to rely upon Lorca's superior knowledge of of the like kind matters as music. Once, at a design he inquired, "Should I be liking this?" Ye Lorca said, and Dali promptly explode into wild applause.

In many ways Lorca's antithesis, Dali was with equal reason shy -despite his flamboyant appearance-as to be "almost mute" while Lorca was vigorous and outgoing, a baptismal vessel of laughter and music. Whenever Lorca took Dali to a tertulia, the painter refrained from talking. Lorca reproached him for his store up and devised a scheme for breaking the ice at of the like kind gatherings. "I'll say you're a great painter and that you're here working," he told Dali.

But when silence go downed in the midst of the nearest tertulia, Dali panicked. Before Lorca could say anything, he blurt "I'm also a true interesting painter."

On several occasions Lorca took Dali to dinner at the domicile of Residencia director, Alberto Jimenez Fraud. As usual, Lorca talked and laughed end the evening, while Dali kept to himself. When he did speak, it was with a reaching far down nervous voice and a heavy Catalan accent He smiled rather than laughed, a furtive smile that expos a rank of tiny, sharp teeth. Jimenez Fraud's wife, Natalia, cogitation the artist "nothing more than Lorca's echo"