Salvador Dalí, who died on 23 January, 1989, once claimed with typical flamboyance: “Le surrealisme, c’est moi.”

In an artistic career that started aged 14 and transcended painting, sculpture, film, set design and countless other genres, his prodigious output included some of the most iconic images in 20th century culture.

His art and politics have inspired devotion and disgust in equal measure, not least because of the nagging impression that for Dalí, the joke was always on someone else.

However, through his images of melting clocks, leaping tigers and lanky-legged elephants, Dalí’s surrealism poses vital questions about art, science and philosophy to create a cultural touchstone for millions of people throughout the world.

Dalí also created such emblematic pieces of 20th century art as the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa, and he pre-empted and influenced pop artists such as Andy Warhol with his crossover corporate work, producing the Chupa Chups lollipop and 1969 Eurovision song contest logos.

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí y Domènech was born on 11 May, 1904, in the Catalonian town of Figueres close to the French border, and after attending drawing classes, he presented his first public exhibition—charcoal drawings—in his home town in 1918.

Three years later, he moved to Madrid to study at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, experimenting with Cubism and Dada, being expelled in 1926 for claiming that no examiner was competent enough to assess his work.

Freudian theory, and later Einstein, were influential on Dalí, and upon joining the Parisian Surrealists in 1928, he embarked upon a period of intense academic study of psychology.

Between 1929 and 1937, Dalí produced some of his most renowned works, including The Persistence of Memory, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans and Swans Reflecting Elephants.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, he moved with his wife Gala to the United States, adding to his catalogue of iconic works. In 1949, he returned to Catalonia, where he spent the rest of his life.

As curator of his own theatre and museum, which opened in 1974 in Figueres, Dalí was able to bring together the largest collection of his works, including sculpture, film, jewellery, photography and 3 and 4-D paintings, and on his death in 1989, he was embalmed and buried in its crypt.