Born in Catalonia, he studied at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he became close friends with Luis Buñuel and Federico García Lorca (among others), but was expelled for his provocative behavour and from then on he continued to teach himself art. After experimenting with Cubism, in 1927 he moved to Paris, where he met Picasso and in 1929 Miró, Breton, Éluard and his muse, Gala Éluard (who would later become his wife) and turned to Surrealism. After a sell-out exhibition in 1929, he became its most famous representative. Breton, however, was unsure about Dalí and indignant at what he considered his fascist tendencies. In 1934 began a series of attempts orchestrated by Breton to throw Dalí out of the group, but this did not ultimately happen until 1939 after Dalí had figured prominently in Duchamp's (and Breton's) legendary 1938 exhibition in Paris.

Dalí's art revolved around psychic states to which the artist lent form by means of a visionary approach. His technique was worthy of an Old Master, enabling him to anchor the states of dream, ecstasy, despair and agony convincingly in an objective and figurative reality. Basic elements, such as the human body and landscapes, as well as objects, became the scene of hallucinatory metamorphosis.