collection
Salvador enjoyed the company of the women and especially that of the eldest, his grandmother and Lucia (his nurse). He had very little contact with children of his own age. He often played alone. He would disguise himself as a king and observe himself in the mirror: “With my crown, a cape thrown over my shoulders, and otherwise completely naked. Then I pressed my genitals back between my thighs, in order to look as much like a girl as possible. Even then I admired three things: weakness, age and luxury.”
Self-Portrait with the Neck of Raphael
1920–1921
Oil on canvas, 41.5 × 53 cm
Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Figueras
Dalí’s mother loved him unreservedly, even lionized him. With his father, Dalí enjoyed a different type of relationship. Salvador Dalí y Cusi was a notary in the Catalan market-town of Figueras, near the Spanish-French border. An anti-Catholic free thinker, he decided not to send his son Salvador to a church school, as would have befitted his social status, but to a state school.
Landscape near Cadaqués
1920–1921
Oil on canvas, 31 × 34 cm
Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Figueras
Only when Salvador failed to reach the required standard in the first year did his father allow him to transfer to a Catholic private school of the French “La Salle” order. There, among other things, the eight-year-old learned French, which was later to become his second mother tongue, and received his first lessons in painting and drawing.
Self-Portrait
c. 1921
Oil on canvas, 36.8 × 41.8 cm
Salvador Dalí Museum, St Petersburg (Florida)
At about the same time as Salvador was receiving his first lessons from the brothers of the “La Salle” order, he set-up his first atelier in the old, disused washroom in the attic of his family home: “I placed my chair in the concrete basin and arranged the high-standing wooden board (that protects washerwomen’s clothing from the water) horizontally across it so that the basin was half covered. This was my workbench!”
Festival at San Sebastián
1921
Gouache on cardboard, 52 × 75 cm
Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Figueras
Dalí’s oldest existing works date from the year 1914. They are small-format watercolors, landscape studies of the area around Figueras.
Oil paintings by the eleven-year-old also exist, mostly as copies of masterpieces which he found in his father’s well-stocked collection of art books. For Salvador, the atelier became the “sanctuary” of his loneliness.
Scene in Cabaret
1922
Oil on canvas, 52 × 41 cm
Bénédicte Petit Collection, Paris
In the laundry-room atelier the little king tried out a new costume: “I started to test myself and to observe; as I performed hilarious eye-winking antics accompanied by a subliminal spiteful smile, at the edge of my mind, I knew, vague as it was, that I was in the process of playing the role of a genius. Ah, Salvador Dalí! You know it now: if you play the role of a genius, you will also become one!”
Family Scene
1923
Oil and gouache on coardboard, 105 × 75 cm
Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Figueras
Later Dalí analysed his behavior: “In order to wrest myself from my dead brother, I had to play the genius so as to ensure that at every moment I was not in fact him, that I was not dead; as such, I was forced to put on all sorts of eccentric poses.”
Salvador’s attempts to distance himself from his dead brother went so far that he believed himself immortal. Descending the stairs one day at school, it suddenly occured to him that he should let himself fall.
The Sick Child (Self-Portrait in Cadaqués)
c. 1923
Oil and gouache on cardboard, 57 × 51 cm
Salvador Dalí Museum, St Petersburg (Florida)
But at the very last moment fear held him back. However, he worked out a plan of action for the next day: “At the very moment I was descending the stairs with all my classmates, I did a fantastic leap into the void, and landing on the steps below bowled over and over until I finally reached the bottom. The effect on the other boys and the teachers who ran over to help me was enormous.”
Satirical Composition (“The Dance” by Matisse)
1923
Gouache on cardboard, 138 × 105 cm
Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Figueras
The ability to attract the attention of the others, and to be subsequently admired by them afforded the little king Salvador untold enjoyment. However, he did prefer it when his “entourage” kept their distance. From his window in the laundry-room atelier he spied on the other children, particularly the schoolgirls from the neighboring school.
Cubist Self-Portrait
1923
Gouache and collage on cardboard, 104.9 × 74.2 cm
Reina Sofia National Museum, Madrid
In the summer of 1916, the twelve-year-old was sent on holiday to the estate of some family friends, the Pitchots. The “Mulí de la Torre” estate, named after its tower-mill, and just a few kilometers from Figueras, was to become a place of magic for Salvador. For weeks he gave himself up to his day-dreams undisturbed, a reverie for which he only had the odd single hour in Figueras in his laundry-room atelier. Most of his fantasies at this time were of an erotic nature. Eroticism and death become unified very early in Dalí’s life.
