Federico García Lorca was a Spanish poet, playwright, and musician regarded as one of the most prominent and influential figures in 20th-century Spanish culture. In his brief literary career, spanning just 19 years, he composed some of the most celebrated poems and plays in contemporary Spanish literature, playing a fundamental role in revitalizing the Spanish-language literary tradition.
Lorca was a distinguished member of the so-called "Generation of '27"which included filmmaker Salvador Dali (as well as filmmaker Luis Bunuel whom Dali also worked with - making the short film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ in 1929).
The close relationship Dali and Lorca had between 1925 and 1928 was a period when Lorca explored his feelings of homosexual love (which Dali is said to have rejected). Journalist Victor Fernandez who catalogued their letters to each other wrote “Lorca is giving the best of himself, using his words to try to win over Dalí, who in turn wants to be at the same intellectual level as the poet. One is trying to catch the artist in his spider’s web, the other lets it happen up to a certain point.”
Lorca’s “Ode to Salvador Dali” written in 1926 is illustrative (see copy)
Dali in his own words in Diary of a Genius (1944) described Lorca’s influence on him. "Each time from the bottom of my loneliness, I get a great idea to come out of my brain or manage to give me an archangelic brushstroke, I hear the hoarse and softly muffled voice of Lorca yelling at me: OLE !"
Lorca’s assassination in 1936 by Spanish nationalists (Franco’s Fascists) in the Spanish Civil War that preceded WWII took a heavy toll on Dali and influenced many works throughout his life. In 2015 the execution certificate by Francoist forces was made public. In that document, Lorca was accused of espionage and treason, of being a Freemason, homosexual, and socialist, and it was stated that Lorca had "confessed”.