1918 An exhibition of his work at the theatre in Fifueras attracts the attention of the critics.

1919 He publishes articles on the old masters in a local magazine, and " quand les bruits s'endorments" (poem)

1921 Dali's mother dies in february. In October Dali is accepted at the San Fernando Academy of Art in Madrid.
he lives in a student residence, where he makes friends with Frederico Garcia Lorca and Luis Bunuel.

1923 Dali criticized his lecturers, is responsible for disturbing the peace at the Academy, and is subsequently
expelled for one year. He is also detained from under arrest under Gerona for 35 days, for political reasons.

1925 Dali spends his holidays at Cadacues 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 (April). In October he is permanently debbarred from the Madrid Academy

1927 Military service from February to October. Publishes "Saint Sebastion" and developes an aesthetic theory
of objectivity.

1928 writes The Yellow Manifesto with Lluis Montanya and Sabastia Gasch

1929 Bunuel and Dali make Un Chien Andalou. The film marks their official acceptance into the ranks of the Paris Surrealists. In the Spring, Dali is in Paris for filming and through Miro, meets Tristan Tzara, the Surrealists and Paul Eluard. In the Summer, in Cadaques, he seduced Eluard’s wife Gala. This lead to a break with his father.

1930 He begins to envolve his paranoiac-critical method. In Le Surrealisme au service de la revolution he publishes “L’ane pourri” and his La femme visible in the “Edition surrealists”. Dali buys a fisherman’s cottage at Port Lligat near Cadaques and henceforth spends a good deal of each year there were Gala. Right-wing exteremists wreck the cinema where the Bunuel/Dali film L’age d’or is showing.

1931 Love and memory is published in the “Editions surealistes” series.

1932 Dali exhibits in the firs Surrealist show in the USA. He writes Babaouo, a screenplay – though the film, like all hiss subsequent film projects, remains unmade. The “Zodiaque” group of collectors is established, and regularly buys his work.

1933 In Minotaure magazine he publishes his article on edible beauty and Art Nouveau architecture, which revives interest in the aesthetics of the turn of the century.

1934 He exhibits The Enigma of William Tell. This leads to arguments with the Surrealists and Andre 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. In December he makes the cover of Time magazine.

1937 Dali writes a screenplay for the Marx Brothers and meets Harpo Marx in Hollywood. In July he both paints and writes The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, a whole-sale exercise in the paranoiac-critical method. He design for Elsa Schiaparelli. Breton and the Surrealists condemn his comments on Hitler.

1938 Dali exhibits in the Surrealist exhibition in Paris (January). He visits Freud in London (July) and draws a number of portraits of him.

1939 The breach with the surrealists is now final. Andre Breton anagrammatically dubs Dali “Avida Dollars”. In the United States Dali published his phamplet Declaration of the Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to His Own Madness. In November Bacchanale, a ballet, is premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, with Libretto and set design by Dali and choreography by Leonide Massine.

1940 After briefly visiting 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.

1942 The Secret Life Of Salcador Dali is published in America.

1946 Dali sketches cartoons for Walt Disney, and designs sequences for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound.

1948 - 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship is published in America.

1949 Dali and Gala return to Europe. Dali designs productions by Peter Brook (Salome) and Luchino Visconty (As you like it). He paints The Madonna of Port Lligat.

1951 Dali publishes The Mystical Manifesto. Beginning of his particle period.

1952 Exhibits in Rome and Venice. Nuclear mysticism.

1953 Triumphant lecture on the phenomenological aspects of the paranoiac-critical method at the Sorbonne (December).

1954 Filming begins on L’histoire prodigieuse de la Dentelliere et de Rhinoceros, directed by Robert Descharnes.

1956 Exhibits at the National Gallery , Washington (DC).

1958 12 May: Dali presents a fifteen-metre loaf of bread at a happening at the Theatre de l’Etoile, Paris.

1959 Dali presents the “ovocipede” he has invented in Paris.

1960 Dali paints large-format mystical works such as The Ecumenical Council.

1961 The Ballet of Gala is premiered in Venice, with libretto and set design by Dali and choreography by Maurice Bejart. Dali gives a lecture on the myth of Castor and Pollux at the Paris Polytechnic.

1962 Publication of Dali de Gala by Robert Descharnes.

1963 Dali publises The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus. He begins to see Perpignan railway station as the centre of the universe.

1964 First major Dali retrospective in the Seibu Museum, Tokyo. Dali publishes the Diary of a Genius.

1971 The Salvasdor Dali Museum is opened in Cleveland, Ohio, with the E. and A. Reynolds Morse Collection, which will subsequently be transferred to Saint Petersburg, Florida, in 1982

1978 Dali discovers Rene Thom’s work on mathematical theory. April: Exhibits his hyperstereoscopic paintings at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. May: Becomes a member of the Acedemie des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

1979 The Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) shows a large Dali retrospective which travels to the Tate Gallery in London.

1982 10 June: Death of Gala. July: Dali is created Marquis de Pubol. From now on he lives in the castle at Pubol which he had given to Gala.

1983 Creation of the perfume “Dali”. An important retrospective is seen in Madrid and Barcelona. May: Dali paints his last picture The Swallow’s Tail.

1984 Dali is severely burnt in a fire in his room at Pubol. Robert Descharnes publises Salvador Dali. The Work, The Man (New York, 1984). Retrospective in the Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara (Italy).

1989 23 January: Dali dies of heart failure in the Torre Galatea, where he has been living since the fire in Pubol castle. He is interred in the crypt of his Teatro-Museo in Figueras as he himself wished. In his will he leaves his entire fortune and works to the Spanish state. In May a large retrospective is seen in Stuttgart, subsequently in Zurich.

1990 The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts shows an exhibition of over one hundred Dali works. The Dali estate (130 million) is willed to the state of spain, with the works to be devided between Madrid and Figueras. Fiftysix paintings will be housed in the Teatro-Museo Dali, Figueras, Spain and possibly also in Barcelona, and 130 paintings wil be exhibits in Catalonia.