dali the paintings

Robert Descharnes & Gilles Neret
Hardback | 752 pages
Publication date 03 Mar 2020

At the age of six, Salvador Dali (1904-1989) wanted to be a cook. At the age of seven, he wanted to be Napoleon. "Since then," he later said, "my ambition has steadily grown, and my megalomania with it. Now I want only to be Salvador Dali, I have no greater wish." Throughout his life, Dali was out to become Dali: that is, one of the most significant artists and eccentrics of the 20th century.

This weighty volume is the most complete study of Dali's painted works ever published. After years of research, Robert Descharnes and Gilles Neret located painted works by the master that had been inaccessible for years-so many, in fact, that almost half the featured illustrations appear in public for the first time in this book.

More than a catalogue raisonne, this book contextualizes Dali's oeuvre and its meanings by examining contemporary documents, from writings and drawings to material from other facets of his work, including ballet, cinema, fashion, advertising, and objets d'art. Without these crutches to support analysis, the paintings would simply be a series of many images.