Sensible artistic advice and lively personal anecdotes in rare important work by famed Surrealist. Filled with Dali's outrageous egotism and unconventional humor, insights into modern art and his own drawings in the margins.

Salvador Dali (1904-1988) was one of the most popular and most visible artists of the last century, known for his provocative, hallucinatory works and his dramatic, eccentric personality. Raised and educated in Spain, he later moved to Paris, where he played a major role in the Surrealist movement. He created an astoundingly diverse body of work, including paintings, drawings, and graphic works, as well as writing and illustrating books and collaborating with director Luis Bunuel on two films. Dali later experimented with other forms of creative expression, conceiving the decor and scenarios for several major ballets, designing stage sets for operas and plays, working on special sequences for Hollywood movies, and designing jewelry. In this fascinating account, journalist and art historian Jean-Louis Gaillemin focuses on the intimate details of Dali's life, especially his intense relationship with his longtime partner, Gala Eluard, and discusses how the artist's psychological views and state of mind influenced his work.

Salvador Dal was one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, as well as a cultural figure who challenged convention. He worked in an incredible array of different media, but is best-known for his Surrealist paintings, abound with Symbolism representing eroticism, death and decay, and demonstrating his fascination with Freud and later science and religion. This wonderful, heavily-illustrated book is a fascinating foray into the life and works of a man whose ability to reveal the gap between reality and illusion proved to be of huge influence to many artists, as well as popular culture in general.

How the exhibition spaces of Surrealism anticipated installation art.

Reproductions and text present critical commentary on the artist and his work.