Product Overview
Salvador Dal (1904-1989) was a prominent Spanish surrealist painter born in Catalonia, Spain. Dal was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. Dal's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. Dal was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork, to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem, and to the irritation of his critics. Written while Dali was still alive, this magnificent book explores, in pictures and text, the forces that shaped Dali's life and work. Through a striking juxtaposition of superb photographs and reproductions of Dali's paintings, Robert Descharnes, a close friend of the artist and his wife for many years, reveals the sources of the painter's inspiration. The landscape of Spanish Catalonia, where Dali was born and lived, had a profound and permanent effect on his painting. In this book the tormented rocks and barren vistas that appear and reappear in his work are shown beside the actual scenes from which they were taken; the comparison affords a unique insight into his disturbing and hallucinatory paintings. Dali's relationship to the most important person in his life, his wife Gala, is also traced through a series of photographs and paintings. Their home in Port Lligat, is explored in detail through Descharnes' camera, providing visual evidence of the tranquility and order which Gala brought into Dali's life. 52 magnificent full-color reproductions of Dali's paintings and drawings trace his artistic development from the romantic works of his precocious youth up to The Great Battle of Tetuan .
