The Collected Writings of Salvador Dalí is the first comprehensive collection of Dalí's shorter writings to appear in English. The volume includes almost all of his writings published in the 1920s and 1930s, most of which appear in this book for the first time in an English translation. It also offers a substantial selection of the shorter pieces published in the 1940s and later, including excerpts from some of his book-length publications. The texts are accompanied by extensive commentaries and annotations which serve to illuminate the rich intellectual background and the broad range of references brought by Dalí to his writings.
In the popular imagination, possibly no other artist’s work is more recognizable than that of Salvador Dalí. Indeed, for many he is the ultimate mad artist, whose singular vision remorselessly probed his own psychological depths. His nightmarish visions and bizarre landscapes express the angst and turbulence of the twentieth century. Dalí’s creativity embraced many different modes of expression and was never constrained by any one style. Over eight decades, the prodigious range of Dalí’s activity spanned every conceivable medium, from painting and drawing to sculpture, film, furniture, books, stage design and jewelry, not to mention his highly eccentric public persona, which could be considered an art form in itself.
The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, houses the most comprehensive collection in the world of the art of Salvador Dali (1904-1989), the renowned Surrealist painter. From the Museum's extensive holdings, forty masterpieces have been selected for this volume by the art historian Kenneth Wach. All forty are reproduced in color, as full-page plates. For each, Mr. Wach has written an illuminating commentary, discussing both the works' style, in art-historical terms, and their often complex psychological content. In addition, the book's general introduction provides a broad overview of Dali's flamboyant career as an artist. It traces the course of Dali's development from his first childhood efforts in Catalonia to his participation in the Surrealist movement in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, to his sojourn in the United States during World War II and his late works executed in Spain. Among the famous images included here are luminous still lifes from Dali's youth, which show his debts to the Old Masters. There are also a number of his remarkable Surrealist beach scenes, with their mysterious vistas and obsessive sexuality. Several troubled depictions of the distorted human body, dating from the difficult period of the Spanish Civil War and World War II, culminate in the expectant Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man. The volume features as well some prime examples of Dali's later "nuclear mysticism," where traditional religious iconography is joined with motifs taken from modern physics. Notable among the later works is The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, a radical reinterpretation of his celebrated earlier painting with limp watches, now reconceived in terms of Albert Einstein's theories of space and time. In scale, the works reproduced as colorplates range from Dali's epic, mural-size canvas The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus to a small, subtly rendered for his Christ of St. John of the Cross. Also illustrated, in black and white, is a representative selection of Dali's drawings, demonstrating his consistently fine draftsmanship through all the phases of his career. A brief preface on the history of the Salvador Dali Museum, a detailed chronology of the artist's life, a bibliography, and an index complete the volume.
This startling early autobiography takes Dalí through his late 30s and "communicates the ... total picture of himself (Dalí) sets out to portray" — Books. Superbly illustrated with over 80 photographs and scores of drawings.
"Published on the occasion of the exhibition Salvador Dali: the late work, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia August 7, 2010-January 9, 2011"--Colophon.
