Dali (phaidon colour library) | christopher masters

Salvador Dali (1904-89) is one of the most controversial and paradoxical artists of the twentieth century.

A painter of considerable virtuosity, he used a traditional illusionistic style to create disturbing images filled with references to violence, death, cannibalism and bizarre sexual practices, from the extraordinary fluid watches in The Persistence of Memory to the gruesome monster in Soft Construction with Boiled Beans and the fetishistic lobster in the famous Lobster Telephone.

Born in Figueras, Spain, Dali started out as a Cubist, but subsequently became involved with the Surrealists in Paris, the most revolutionary artists of the time.

They regarded his paintings as revealing the hidden world of the unconscious.

Indeed, the Surrealists leader, Andre Breton, remarked: It is perhaps with Dali that for the first time the windows of the mind are opened fully wide.

However, Breton later expelled him from the group for his Fascist sympathies and derided his commercial success in the United States, calling him Avida Dollars, an anagram of his name.

Dalis response was equally curt: The difference between me will the Surrealists is that I am a Surrealist.

Far from restricting his interests to painting, Dali also wrote two autobiographies, including Diary of a Genius (1965), designed sets and costumes for a play by his friend Federico Garcia Lorca and collaborated with Luis Bunuel on the films Un Chien Andalou (1929) and LAge dor (1931), a medium which proved particularly apt for his provocative imagery.