Salvador Dali, one of the greatest surrealists of our time. There are so many things said about this great artist, but I think he is best known not only by his excellent work but also by his extravagant behavior. He was not only a painter but also a sculptor, filmmaker, writer and insane or just a genius who wanted people to believe that he was insane. People like his work, but I think that all of you will enjoy reading anecdotes, fun facts and some of his statements.

Salvador Dali used AKA: Avida Dollars, an anagram of his name meaning “Eager for dollars”.

Dali once took his pet ocelot with him to a New York restaurant and tethered it to a leg of the table while he ordered coffee. A middle-aged lady walked past and looked at the animal in horror. “What’s that?” she cried. “It’s only a cat,” said Dali scathingly. “I’ve painted it over with an op-art design.” The woman, embarrassed by her initial reaction, took a closer look and sighed with relief. “I can see now that’s what it is,” she said. “At first I thought it was a real ocelot.”

In 1936 Salvador Dali inadvertently caused more sensation than he had intended at the International Surrealist Exhibition at the new Burlington Galleries. On a hot summer day he made a dramatic entrance for a lecture he was due to give, holding in one hand two Russian wolfhounds on a leash and in another a billiard cue. On his head was a diving helmet. He strode on the stage and tried to remove the helmet but it had been bolted down. The audience waited, unaware that Dali was suffocating. He was finally rescued and practically dead when released. The audience applauded what it thought to be a humorous pantomime.

Here you can enjoy in some of his statements and give a judge if he is a genius, insane or something else.

“The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.”
“What is an elegant woman? An elegant woman is a woman who despises you and who has no hair under her arms.”

“The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.”

“Picasso is a painter, so am I; Picasso is Spanish, so am I; Picasso is a communist, neither am I.”

“The problem with the youth of today’ is that one is no longer part of it.”

“At the age of six years I wanted to be a chef. At the age of seven I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambitions have continued to grow at the same rate ever since.”

“Many people do not reach their eighties because they spend too much time in their forties.”

“I tried sex once with a woman and that woman was Gala. It was overrated. I tried sex once with a man and that man was the famous juggler Federico Garcia Lorca [the Spanish Surrealist poet]. It was very painful.”

“I do not take drugs. I am drugs.”