Name at birth: Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali i Domenech
Salvador Dali was the 20th century's most famous surrealist artist, the painter of 1931's The Persistence of Memory (the one with the droopy clocks). In the 1920s and '30s Dali made his reputation in Europe and the U.S., influenced by the cubism of Picasso and the psychological theories of Freud. Breaking with other surrealist artists in the 1940s, Dali's later paintings were more realistic and filled with religious and scientific imagery. Famous for his flamboyant personality as well as his art, he worked in several media, including film: he collaborated with filmmaker Luis Buñuel on Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930), and designed the dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945).
