Salvador Dali: SALVADOR DALI: 1904-1989 - Spanish artist Salvador Dali was born as the son of a prestigious notary in the small town of Figuera in Northern Spain. His talent as an artist showed at an early age. Dali's art teachers were a then well known Spanish impressionist painter, Ramon Pichot and later an art professor at the Municipal Drawing School. In 1923 Dali's father bought his son his first printing press. He began to study art at the Royal Academy of Art in Madrid where he was expelled twice and never took the final examinations. His opinion was that he was more qualified than those who should have examined him. As an artist, Salvador Dalí was not limited to a particular style or media. The body of Dali's work, from early impressionist paintings through his transitional surrealist works, and into Dali's classical period, reveals a constantly growing and evolving artist. Dalí worked in all media, leaving behind a wealth of oils, watercolors, drawings, graphics, and sculptures, jewels and objects of all descriptions. Whether working from pure inspiration or on a commissioned illustration, Salvador Dalí's matchless insight and symbolic complexity are apparent