Salvador Dali

Spanish artist Salvador Dali was one of the preeminent artists of the surrealist movement and his works are among the most recognizable and admired by the public. Like many of his contemporaries, Dali was influenced by the theories of Sigmund Freud, which inspired him to adopt a "paranoiac critical" approach to viewing the world and celebrate the irrationalities within it.

In addition to his work as a painter, Dali was also an accomplished writer, printmaker, draftsman, sculptor, photographer, filmmaker and set designer. He collaborated on films with both Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock

Dali was a shameless self promoter: While only in his twenties, he proclaimed himself a genius and his wife created an anagram of his name '"Ávida Dollars" (hungry for dollars) to describe his exploits. He was the first surrealist to earn a healthy income for his art, and fellow surrealists expelled him from the school during a trial in 1934.