1904   May 11th, Salvador Dali is born in Figueras, Spain. His talent for drawing is apparent from a very early age.       1918    An exhibition of his work at the theatre in Figueras attracts the attention of the critics.       1919    He publishes articles on the old masters in a local magazine.       1921   Death of Dali's mother. In October Dali is accepted at the San Fernando Academy of Art (Madrid). He makes friends with Federico Garcia Lorca and Luis Buñuel.       1923    Dali criticises his lecturers, disturbs the peace at the Academy and is expelled for a year. He is also under arrest in Gerona for 35 days, due to political reasons.       1925   Dali spends his holidays at Cadaqués with Lorca. In November he has his first solo exhibition at the Dalmau gallery in Barcelona.       1926   Dali goes to Paris for the first time and meets Picasso. In October he is expelled permanently from the San Fernando Academy of Art.       1927    Military service. Publishes Saint Sebastian and develops an aesthetic theory of Objectivity.       1928    Writes The Yellow Manifesto with Lluis Montanya and Sebastia Gash.       1929    Buñuel and Dali make Le Chien Andalou. In Paris, Dali, through Miro, meets Tristan Tzara, the Surrealists and Paul Eluard. In the summer, in Cadaqués, he seduces Eluard's wife, Gala. This leads to a break in the relationship with his father.       1930   He begins to evolve his paranoiac-critical method. He publishes La femme visible at the "Editions Surréalistes". Dali buys a fisherman's cottage at Port Lligat near Cadaqués. Right-wing extremists wreck the cinema where the Buñuel/Dali film L'Age d'Or is showing.       1931   Love and Memory is published in the Editions Surréalistes series.       1932   Dali exhibits in the first Surrealist show in the USA. The Zodiaque group of collectors is established and regularly buys his work.       1933   He publishes his article on edible beauty and art nouveau architecture in the magazine Minotaure, which revives interest in the aesthetics of the turn of the century.       1934   Beginning of conflicts with the Surrealists and André Breton. Dali's New York exhibition is a triumphant success.       1936   The Spanish Civil War begins. Lecturing at a Surrealist exhibition in London, Dali narrowly escapes suffocating in a diving suit.       1937   Dali writes a screenplay for the Marx Brothers. He both paints and writes The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, a wholesale exercise in the paranoiac-critical method. Breton and the Surréalistes condemn his comments.       1938   Dali exhibits in the Surrealists exhibition in Paris. He visits Freud in London and draws a number of portraits of him.       1939   The breach with the Surrealists is now final. André Breton anagramatically dubs Dali "Avida Dollars". In November Bacchanale, a ballet, is premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, with libretto and set design by Dali.       1940   After a brief visit to Paris, Dali and Gala return to New York, where they remain in exile until 1948.       1941    Dali-Miro exhibition in The Museum of Modern Art, New York.       1946    Dali designs sequences for Alfred Hitchcocks film Spellbound.       1948   Dali and Galas return to Europe.       1952   Exhibits in Rome and Venice. Nuclear mysticism.       1954   Shooting of the film L'histoire prodigieuse de la dentellière et du rhinocéros, produced by Robert Descharnes.       1955   Triumphant lecture on the phenomenological aspects of the paranoiac-critical method at the Sorbonne (December).       1960    Dali paints large-format mystical works.       1961   The Ballet of Gala is premiered in Venice, with libretto and set design by Dali and choreography by Maurice Béjart. Dali gives a lecture on the myth of Castor and Pollux at the Paris Polytechnic.       1963   Dali publishes The Tragic Myth of Millet's Angelus. He begins to ascribe a decisive role in the constitution of the universe to Perpignan railway station.       1964   First major Dali retrospective in the Seibu Museum, Tokyo. Dali publishes the Diary of a Genius.       1968   Salvador Dali and the Art Collector Isidro Clot established the basis of a major collaboration in The Art world.       1971   The Salvador Dali Museum is opened in Cleveland, Ohio, with the E. and A. Reynolds Morse Collection, which would be transferred to Saint Petersburg, Florida, in 1982.       1974   Dali opened his own Museum, The Teatro - Museo Dali in Figueras.       1978   Dali discovers René Thom's work on mathematical catastrophe theory. April: exhibits his hypestereoscopric paintings at the Guggenheim Museum. May: becomes a member of the Académie des Beaux Arts, Paris.       1979   The Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) shows a large Dali retrospective which travels to the Tate Gallery in London.       1982   June 10th, death of Gala. July: Dali is created Marquis de Pubol.       1983   An important retrospective is shown in Madrid and Barcelona. Dali created his last painting La Queue d'Aronde.       1984   Dali was rescued by his friend Robert Descharnes from a fire in Pubol Castle. He was seriously burnt.       1989   Dali died on 23rd January at Torre Galatea in Figueras. His corpse was laid out in the crypt of his Teatro - Museo in Figueras.