During his years at high school, Dali was part of two local publications: Stadium, which was published by a group of students from January 1919 to June. He produced drawings, a poem and a bunch of articles called The Old Masters of Painting. He was also part of El Sanyó pancraci, which he painted a portrait for. He also wrote a diary in Catalan called Les meves impressions I records intims (My private impressions and memories) in which he showed his enthusiasm about his future. He also started writing a romantic novel, Tardes d’estiu (summer afternoons).
When Dali was only a young artist, he went through a time he called the ‘stone period.’ “I used stones, in fact, to paint with. When I wanted to obtain a very luminous cloud or an intense brilliance, I would put a small stone on the canvas which I would thereupon cover with paint. One of the most successful paintings of this kind was a large sunset with scarlet clouds. The sky was filled with stones of every dimension, some of them as large as an apple! This painting was hung for a time in my parents’ dining room, and I remember that during the peaceful family gatherings after the evening meal we would sometimes be startled by the sound of something dropping on the mosaic. My mother would stop sewing for a moment and listen, but my father would always reassure her with the words, ‘It’s nothing – it’s just another stone that’s dropped from our child’s sky!’ With a worried look, my father would add, ‘The ideas are good, but who would ever buy a painting which would eventually disappear while their house got cluttered up by stones?