In 1922 Salvador Dalí (Figueres, Girona, 1904 – 1989) moved to Madrid to study at Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando [Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando]. At the Residencia de Estudiantes [Student Residence] he met Luis Buñuel and Federico García Lorca, with whom he established intense and productive relationships. In 1926 he was permanently expelled from the academy for declaring the institution’s tribunal incompetent. In 1929, through Joan Miró, he came into contact with André Breton’s surrealist group and collaborated with Luis Buñuel on the film Un chien andalou.

In the early 1930s he developed the paranoiac-critical method. He officially joined the Surrealist group, but was expelled in 1934 due to his political ideology. That year he married Gala, his muse and a paramount figure in his career. With the Nazi occupation of Bordeaux, the couple moved to the United States where Dalí designed jewelry and magazine covers, and where he became a media star. In the late 1940s he began his mystical phase, centered on religious motifs and subjects related to scientific advancements such as nuclear fission and fusion. After his return to Spain in 1948, Gala and Dalí established their home in Port Lligat. In 1974 the Dalí Theatre-Museum opened in Figueres.