Arena · Season 1 · Episode 293

Salvador Dali

Friday, November 21

'The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.' So says Salvador Dali one of the most famous painters in the world. Dali now lives as a recluse and has been virtually unseen since his near death in a suspicious fire two years ago. Having courted publicity all his life he is now shrouded in secrecy. Dali is the great showman of Surrealism. As a painter his style is unique, yet perhaps his greatest achievement is his own personality. Dali is a self-pronounced genius. Today Dali lives in the palace museum which he has built as a monument to Ms life, and holds court in the room which he never leaves. .4reKa traces his career through film, much of it from Dali's own private archive, and combines the testimony of his closest associates, including Captain Peter Moore and Amanda Lear, and his Surrealist contemporaries Max Ernst, Luis Bunuel and Man Ray, with Dali's own extravagant account of his life and adventures.