Salvador Dal,in fullSalvador Felipe Jacinto Dal y Domenech (bornMay 11, 1904,Figueras,SpaindiedJan. 23, 1989,Figueras),Spanish Surrealist painter and printmaker, influential for his explorations of subconscious imagery.As anartstudent inMadridandBarcelona, Dal assimilated a vast number of artistic styles and displayed unusual technical facility as a painter. It was not until the late 1920s, however, that two events brought about the development of his mature artistic style: his discovery of Sigmund Freuds writings on the erotic significance ofsubconsciousimagery, and his affiliation with the Paris Surrealists, a group of artists and writers who sought to establish the greater reality of mans subconscious over his reason. To bring up images from his subconscious mind, Dal began to induce hallucinatory states in himself by a process he described as paranoiac critical.Once Dal hit on this method, hispaintingstyle matured with extraordinary rapidity, and from 1929 to 1937 he produced the paintings which made him the worlds best-known Surrealist artist. He depicted a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed, deformed, or otherwise metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. Dal portrayed these objects in meticulous, almost painfully realistic detail and usually placed them within bleak, sunlit landscapes that were reminiscent of his Catalonian homeland. Perhaps the most famous of these enigmatic images is The Persistence of Memory (1931), in which limp, melting watches rest in an eerily calm landscape. With the Spanish director Luis Buuel, Dal also made two Surrealistic filmsUn Chien andalou(1928;An Andalusian Dog) andLge dor(1930;The Golden Age)that are similarly filled with grotesque but highly suggestive images.In the late 1930s Dal switched to painting in a more academic style under the influence of the RenaissancepainterRaphael, and as a consequence he was expelled from the Surrealist movement. Thereafter he spent much of his time designingtheatresets, interiors of fashionable shops, and jewelry, as well as exhibiting his genius for flamboyant self-promotional stunts in the United States, where he lived from 1940 to 1955. In the period from 1950 to 1970 Dal painted many works with religious themes, though he continued to explore erotic subjects, to represent childhood memories, and to use themes centring on his wife, Gala. Notwithstanding their technical accomplishments, these later paintings are not as highly regarded as the artists earlier works. The most interesting and revealing of Dals books isThe Secret Life of Salvador Dal(194244).

Gaetano Donizetti,in fullDomenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (bornNov. 29, 1797,Bergamo, Cisalpine RepublicdiedApril 8, 1848,Bergamo,Lombardy, Austrian Empire),Italian opera composer whose numerous operas in both Italian and French represent a transitional stage in operatic development between Rossini and Verdi. Among his major works areLucia di Lammermoor(1835),La fille du rgiment(1840), andLa favorite(1840). In his serious operas he developed considerably the dramatic weight and emotional content of the genre, and his comic operas have a sparkling wit and gaiety all their own. The youngest of three sons of the caretaker of themonte di pieta(the municipal pawnshop), Donizetti began his musical studies withGiovanni Simone Mayr, a Bavarian priest who was musical director of Sta. Maria Maggiore, Bergamos chief church, and also a successful composer of opera. As a choirboy Donizetti did not shine, but Mayr perceived in him a nascent musical ability and secured his entry into the Liceo Filarmonico (themusicschool) at Bologna, where he had a thorough training infugue andcounterpoint. His father hoped he would become a church composer, but, though he did compose a vast quantity of sacred music, his natural instinct was for the theatre.Donizetti scored his first success withEnrico di Borgogna,which first appeared in 1818 at the Teatro San Luca, in Venice, and during the next 12 years he composed no fewer than 31 operas, most of them produced atNaplesand now forgotten. In 1830 hisAnna Bolena,produced in Milan, carried his fame abroad to all the European capitals and eventually across the Atlantic. Two years later he scored another lasting success withLelisir damore(The Elixir of Love), a comedy full of charm and character with a libretto by Felice Romani, the best theatre poet of the day.Lucrezia Borgia(1833), also with a libretto by Romani, consolidated his reputation at La Scala in Milan and elsewhere. Like the opera composers Gioacchino Rossini andVincenzo Bellinibefore him, he next gravitated to Paris, where hisMarino Faliero,though not a failure, suffered from comparison with BellinisI Puritani, produced a few weeks before. Donizetti then returned to Naples for the production of his tragic masterpiece,Lucia di Lammermoor, on Sept. 26, 1835.In 1828 Donizetti had married Virginia Vasseli, the sister of one of his closest friends in Rome; they made their home in Naples. He was deeply devoted to her and never really recovered his spirits after her death, soon after the stillbirth of a son, in 1837. His distress was exacerbated by the fact that none of the three children born to them survived birth. It seems clear thatsyphilis, to which Donizetti himself later succumbed, was already taking its toll of his family.