Salvador Dali was born in Catalonia, a region of Spain in 1904. Dali was educated at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid and after passing through Cubism and other various styles, Dali became one of the leaders of the Surrealist movement around 1929.

The Surrealist movement was born out of another reactionary movement known as Dada. Dada artists produced works of anti-art and nonsense that deliberately defied reason. The artists wished to react against the atrocities of WWI. The leader of the group, Andre Breton, would go on to form Surrealism. Its goal was to reunite conscious and unconscious experiences, merging the dream and fantasy world with the real life and rational world. The movement drew heavily on the writings of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.

After his induction into the group, Dali devised a technique called "paronoic- critical activity". This illusionistic technique became the dominant form of Surrealistic painting. Dali wished to make use of experiences with hallucinations. Dali called his works "hand painted dream- photographs". Dali brought a new objectivity to Surrealism as well as a new subject matter and scheme for dealing with personal fantasy. Dali adopted outrageously provocative attitudes in his public behavior and seemed obsessed with abnormal psychology. Dali hoped by culminating all of these things it would promote the transformation of consciousness that was the goal of the Surrealists.

Dali was also involved in the creation of the first Surrealist films, but after adopting a somewhat more classical style he was chastised by Breton and some of the more traditional Surrealists. After moving to the states in 1940, his self- advertisement helped him gain a certain notoriety and his work would gain a new found popularity toward the end of the 20th century.