Salvador Dalí

– A Biography –

“… mad genius or cunning manipulator? That question has haunted Dalí’s career. Ever since he burst upon the scene in the 1920s with his astounding draughtsmanship and surrealistic vision he has been both admired and reviled.
Painting the language of the subconscious with hallucinatory vividness, Dalí became one of the most widely popular artists of all time. Today prints and lithographs bearing his signature sell worldwide for astounding prices, although many are considered to be blatant forgeries or cheap reproductions.

Meryle Secrest goes behind the carefully maintained  façade to reveal many hitherto unknown details of Dalí’s troubled childhood, suggesting that the artist’s early works are actually autobiographical to  a much greater extent than has been thought. Her study, the first full-scale biography for more than two decades – unauthorized, and therefore uncesored – examines Dalí’s childhood to find the origins of his later behavior and the reason for his frantic attempts to assert his individuality.
Dalí’s student friendships in Madrid with the poet Federico García Lorca and the filmmaker Luis Buñuel, his impact on the Paris Surrealists led by André Breton and  his marriage to his ‘muse’ Gala (former wife of the French poet Paul Eluard) are recounted at illuminating length, based on new material and interviews with former friends and colleagues.|”