Salvador Dalí: just the mention of his name (or the sight of his curled, waxed moustache) is enough to set the imagination off into surreal worlds of wilting clocks, tigers leaping from the mouths of fish and stilt-legged elephants stalking around hallucinogenic deserts.

Born in 1904 in the town Figueres, north of Barcelona, Dalí’s talent for painting was encouraged by his mother at an early age. He attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid in 1922, but his outspoken nature, though entertaining for fellow students, got him suspended a year later for criticising his teachers.

Undeterred, in the late 1920s he made many trips to Paris where he met Spanish cubist painter Pablo Picasso, along with Joan Miró and René Magritte, who introduced him to surrealism. Despite a mutual admiration, political differences and one too many fiery conversations led to Dalí’s expulsion from the group for failing to denounce fascism and Franco. It seemed to matter little to Dalí, whose ego was cushioned by a galactic sense of self-importance: ‘Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy – the joy of being Salvador Dalí – and I ask myself in rapture: what wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?’