The Beihang University showcased more than 30 pieces of Salvador Dali's original works on Nov.1 The exhibition, which includes etchings, watercolor paintings and lithographs exhibited to the public for the first time, will run till Nov.21. Most of masterpieces were created between the 1960s and 1980s, and expressed Dali’s unique style.

Persistence of Memory(1931)

Salvador Dali is considered the greatest artist of the surrealist art movement and one of the greatest masters of art of the twentieth century. Dali's parents and his wife Gala significantly influenced his artistic style. During his lifetime the public got a picture of an eccentric paranoid. His personality caused a lot of controversy. Was he famous or notorious? Was he a great artist or just a swindler? Was he a modernist or a clumsy inheritor of classicalism?

The Prodigy Child without an Exam

Salvador Dali was born the son of a prestigious notary in the small town of Figuera in Northern Spain. His talent as an artist showed at an early age and Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali received his first drawing lessons when he was ten years old. His art teachers were a then well-known Spanish impressionist painter, Ramon Pichot, and later an art professor at the Municipal Drawing School. In 1923 his father bought his son his first printing press.

Dali began to study art at the Royal Academy of Art in Madrid. He was expelled twice and never took the final examinations. His opinion was that he was more qualified than those who should have examined him.

Surreal Art

In 1928 Dali went to Paris where he met the Spanish painters Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro. He established himself as the principal figure of a group of surrealist artists grouped around Andre Breton, who was something like the theoretical "schoolmaster" of surrealism. Years later Breton turned away from Dali, accusing him of supporting of fascism, excessive self-presentation, and financial greed.