Salvador Dalí has ??become synonymous with Surrealism. His soft watches, burning giraffes, and lobster telephones are like the natural language of dreams. Yet his work contains many other surprises. Dalí was driven by a desire to connect with the world , whether exploring the Catalan landscape or responding to the shocking use of the atomic bomb with canvases whose elements float side by side like atom particles. He wrote his own “ paranoia-critical method ,” dabbled in optical illusions, double images, and stereoscopic painting, invented the “Surrealist object with a symbolic function,” created fabulous sets for his own ballets, and staged his mustachioed genie character for various photographers. With age, the man who critics always considered “painted like an angel” drew inspiration from classical art, updating and subverting Renaissance iconography in immense celestial compositions , or with his final tributes to Michelangelo and Velázquez.
This dizzying panorama unfolds in two volumes: the Baby SUMO-sized booklet, which brings together reproductions of Dalí’s main works in an unprecedented format , revealing every detail and sublime brushstroke of the artist, and a chronological booklet combining texts by Montse Aguer and Carme Ruiz of the Fundació Gala- Salvador Dalí in Figueres, the artist’s hometown. Echoing the most recent research, they tell, year after year, the story of the artist and his art, with numerous quotations from the artist’s own writings, his correspondence and critiques issued at each period, illustrated by portraits of the artist, famous or rare, magazine articles, sketches and literary illustrations, as well as other works produced in various disciplines. We meet the young Dalí, talented, precocious but turbulent , who associates with the Catalan avant-garde and becomes the inseparable friend of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. We follow him during his first stay in Paris, we see him shy, meeting Picasso in his studio, before in 1929 he becomes known in certain circles for his first film, with Luis Buñuel. He shocks the bourgeoisie, but soon also the surrealist avant-gardewith his soiled underpants and masturbatory idols. That same year, Dalí met his muse Gala, who became an integral part of his life and vision. We follow the couple to America, where Dalí became a public figure, in the media and the social calendar, participating in projects in theater and fashion, growing his iconic mustache, working in Hollywood with Hitchcock and Disney . We witness their return to Spain after the war, where they held salons, and where the artist built his own monument in the theater-museum of Figueres.
Thirty-five years after his death, he still speaks to us and surprises us, and forty years after his first monograph at TASCHEN, here is a new, fresh and large-format tribute to this titan of modern painting.
Limited collector’s edition of 10,000 numbered copies
Edition of 10,000 copies Hardcover, 36.7 x 50 cm, 438 pages, hot-stamped, gilt-edged, with a 40-page legend booklet, in a luxury slipcase 41 x 56.2 cm, bound in black velvet, embossed with gold leaf; with chronology, cloth binding, 22 x 28.9 cm, 624 pages; total weight 16 kg
Dalí. BABY SUMO £1,000 BUY HERE
