May 11: Salvador Dali, Spanish surrealist artist

BORN MAY 11:

Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist known for the striking and bizarre images in his work. He lived in France during the Spanish Civil War, and the U.S. during World War II. His genres included painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design, and photography, sometimes in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote: fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays, and criticism. But his public persona is perhaps better remembered than anything he produced: the mustache, the pet ocelot ("Babou"), and the public behavior that might best be interpreted as "performance art." One of his best-known paintings is the one with the dripping clocks, Persistence of Memory; the disjointed figure in Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War); the slightly more traditional (less surrealistic) Christ of Saint John of the Cross and Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus); and way out there on the edge, The Hallucinogenic Toreador.

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Apr. 20: Joan Miró , Spanish painter and sculptor

BORN APRIL 20:

Joan Miró (1893-1983) was a Spanish painter and sculptor born in Barcelona, where a museum has been dedicated to his work. He earned international acclaim for his Surrealistic work with a personal style. Its childlike nature reflects his interest in the human unconscious or subconscious mind. An iconoclast, he stated his contempt for conventional painting methods as a way of supporting bourgeois society, and declared an "assassination of painting" in favor of upsetting established paintings' visual elements.

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Apr. 19: José Echegaray, Spanish dramatist

BORN APRIL 19:

José Echegaray (1832-1916) was one of the leading Spanish dramatists of the end of the 19th century, and received the 1904 Nobel Prize for Literature (shared with the Provençal poet Frédéric Mistral) for reviving "the great traditions of the Spanish drama." After a career as a professor of mathematics and engineering, and another as a government minister (starting after the revolution of 1868 overthrew the monarchy, and ending when the First Spanish Republic ended in 1874), he indulged in what had always been the love of his life: drama. It is said that he replicated the achievements of his predecessors of the Spanish Golden Age, such as Lope de Vega. One of his greatest works, El Gran Galeoto, is based on the story of Paolo and Francesca in Dante's Divine Comedy, itself derived from the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. Echegaray was a prolific author; one catalog lists nearly 80 plays written from 1874, and nearly 30 works of non-fiction.

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Apr. 12: Francisco Garces, Spanish Franciscan missionary

BORN APRIL 12:

Name Francisco Garces (1738-1781) was a pioneering Spanish Franciscan missionary and explorer of northern Mexico, the American southwest, and both Californias. Born in Aragon in north-central Spain, he was ordained a priest in 1763. He was among the Franciscans who replaced the Jesuits when the King of Spain expelled them from his domains, and was assigned to the renowned Mission San Xavier del Bac now near Tucson, Arizona. (He was in the group of Franciscans that took charge of present-day Sonora, Mexico and Arizona, USA. Other Franciscans, under the doughty Junípero Serra, took Baja California and expanded into what is now the state of California, USA.) Not resting on his laurels, Garcés conducted extensive explorations in the Sonoran, Colorado, and Mojave Deserts, along the Gila River, and the Colorado River from the Gulf of California and Lower Colorado River Valley to the Grand Canyon, recording encounters with the Native American tribes along the way. Twice he traveled with the conquistador Juan Bautista de Anza, and also entered the San Joaquin Valley in 1776. With Juan Díaz he established two missions on the lower Colorado River near modern Yuma; in July 1781, he and his fellow friars were killed in a violent native uprising. He left behind two diaries (available online in English and Spanish), one covering the first de Anza expedition (January-July, 1774) and the other covering the second (October-December, 1776).

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Dec. 29: Pablo Casals, Catalan cellist and conductor

BORN DECEMBER 29:

Pablo Casals (1876-1973) Catalan cellist and conductor, one of the greatest cellists of all time, who gave a solo recital in Barcelona at the age of fourteen. Best remembered for recordings of the "Bach Cello Suites" made from 1936 to 1939; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1963, among many honors.

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Oct. 25: Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist

BORN OCTOBER 25:

Pablo Picasso Spanish painter, multi-faceted artist, poet, and playwright; work includes Les Demoiselles d'Avignon; Guernica; Dove; Head of a Woman; and Bull's Head. He has become a byword for "the artist": "You're good, kid, but you're no Picasso."

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Oct. 23: Ignatius of Loyola, Spanish monk

BORN OCTOBER 23:

Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) Spanish Roman Catholic theologian and founder of the Jesuits; wrote the Autobiography and Spiritual Exercises, which are still used today.

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Sep. 29: Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish novelist

BORN SEPTEMBER 29th:

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright who holds a position in Spanish literature equal to that of Shakespeare in English. He is renowned for The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, featuring a minor nobleman whose fevered imagination causes him to think that he is a knight errant out on adventures with his trusty "squire" (actually a simple farmer) Sancho Panza, a point of view that gives rise to the expression "tilting at windmills" (which he does, believing they are giants).

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