Figueras & Dali

"At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since." Salvador Dali.

At Chateau La Tour Apollinaire we are mad about Salvador Dali. To us he represents the iconoclastic spirit which has been so essential in moving from the perils of modernity to the promise of post-modernism. And how lucky we are that two of the museums which best represent his work and times are within 40 minutes (Figueras) and an hour's (Port Lligat) drive.

Simply turn left out of our front gates and head onto the A9 toward Barcelona. Within 30 minutes you will be crossing the Spanish border and a further ten minutes will bring you to Figueras north offramp, after which you follow the signs to the centre of town. Before entering Figueras, you will see the geodesic Buckminster Fuller style dome which crowns the Teatro Museo Dali. Park in one of the numerous parking garages, and follow the signs to the museum. As the attached pictures reveal, it is possible to spend an entire morning or afternoon enjoying the surreal and often hilarious atmosphere and works Dali spent 15 years creating here. There are also some great shops and excellent restaurants nearby, so take a leisurely lunch before heading off to see Dali's home and studios at Port Lligat,

To get to Port Lligat, simply follow the signs out of Figueras to Rosas and Cadaques. When you get to Cadaques you will see signs to Port Lligat, which is actually an ancient fishing village set on the azure Mediterannean, with the most amazing light. Dali joked that he was the first person to see the sun rise in Spain, as his bedroom faced east toward the nearby Spanish border with France. He would start working at sunrise and often not stop until sunset. After cocktails he and Gala would receive everyone from John Lennon and Yoko Ono to the King of Spain to Andy Warhol to Jack Warner and Helena Rubinstein

Abbreviated Dali Biography and Famous Quotes

Dalí, Salvador (1904-89): Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. After passing through phases of Cubism, Futurism and Metaphysical painting, he joined the Surrealists in 1929 and his talent for self-publicity rapidly made him the most famous representative of the movement. Throughout his life he cultivated eccentricity and exhibitionism (one of his most famous acts was appearing in a diving suit at the opening of the London Surrealist exhibition in 1936), claiming that this was the source of his creative energy. He took over the Surrealist theory of automatism but transformed it into a more positive method which he named `critical paranoia'. According to this theory one should cultivate genuine delusion as in clinical paranoia while remaining residually aware at the back of one's mind that the control of the reason and will has been deliberately suspended. He claimed that this method should be used not only in artistic and poetical creation but also in the affairs of daily life. His paintings employed a meticulous academic technique that was contradicted by the unreal `dream' space he depicted and by the strangely hallucinatory characters of his imagery. He described his pictures as `hand-painted dream photographs' and had certain favorite and recurring images, such as the human figure with half-open drawers protruding from it, burning giraffes, and watches bent and flowing as if made from melting wax (The Persistence of Memory, MOMA, New York; 1931).

In 1937 Dalí visited Italy and adopted a more traditional style; this together with his political views (he was a supporter of General Franco) led Breton to expel him from the Surrealist ranks. He moved to the USA in 1940 and remained there until 1955. During this time he devoted himself largely to self-publicity; his paintings were often on religious themes (The Crucifixion of St John of the Cross, Glasgow Art Gallery, 1951), although sexual subjects and pictures centring on his wife Gala were also continuing preoccupations. In 1955 he returned to Spain and in old age became a recluse.

Apart from painting, Dalí's output included sculpture, book illustration, jewellery design, and work for the theatre. In collaboration with the director Luis Buñuel he also made the first Surrealist films 'Un chien andalou' (1929) and 'L'Age d'or' (1930) and he contributed a dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock's 'Spellbound' (1945). He also wrote a novel, Hidden Faces (1944) and several volumes of flamboyant autobiography. Although he is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists of the 20th century, his status is controversial; many critics consider that he did little if anything of consequence after his classic Surrealist works of the 1930s. There are museums devoted to Dalí's work in Figueras, his home town in Spain, and in St Petersburg in Florida.

1904: Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí was born on May, 11th in Figueras, Catalonia, Spain.
1917: He started to visit the School of Art. First paintings.
1918: First small exhibition in the Theatre.
1921-25: Went to Academy of Arts in Madrid. Conflicts with his teachers.
1925: First stand-alone exibition of Dalí at the Galery of Dalmau.
1926-28: Early explorations of the Surrealism. Dalí in Cadaqués 1927
1929: Gala came into his life. Joined the group of Surrealists in 1930 Gala 1927, and Dalí 1929
1934-37: Dalí had his paranoid-critic-epoch. Dalí and Gala marry in 1937
1941-44: "Avida Dollars" in America.
1945-49: Dalí the Classic. Dalí and his Daddy in Cadaqués 1948
1950-65: His mystic period. He wrote several books (The secret life of Salvador Dalí).
1963-78: Dalí the Divine - Dalí and the Science.
1979-83: Theory of Disaster.
1982: Gala dies.
1989: Dalí, Jan. 23th, died.

FAMOUS DALI QUOTES

• The problem with the youth of today' is that one is no longer part of it.
• Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.
• When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is little doubt as to which is at fault.
• You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life.
• People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings.
• When I paint, the sea roars. The others splash about in the bath.
• One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.
• The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic sentiments.
• At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.
• Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it.
• You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity.
• Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.