Salvador Dali Biography

Dali (Mallard Fine Art Series)

by: Paul Moorhouse

Almost half Dalí's illustrations in this book have rarely been seen. This publication presents the entire painted oeuvre of Salvador Dalí (1904-1989).

Amazon Price: $12.71 (as of 12/18/2009)

Dalis Optical Illusions

"If you compare me with any classical painter whatsoever, then I'm an absolute nonentity," confessed Salvador Daliin his late years. The statement is particularly ironic given Dali's status as one of the most original twentieth-century artists and the twentieth-century artists' general disregard for the masters. But Dali, of course, was never one to run with the crowd. In fact, Dalibuilt his extraordinary technical repertoire by studying the ancient masters of perspective and applying what he had learned to create canvases of his own mad visions.

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Salvador Dali: The Catalogue Raisonne of Etchings and Mixed-Media Prints, 1924-1980 (Art & Design)

by: Salvador Dali, Lutz W. Loepsinger, Ralf Michler

This book was long overdue. Granted, there is an earlier book published by Albert Field that attempted a catalogue raissonne but this one done with help from longtime Dali collaborator/confidant Robt. Descharnes is at least as good and perhaps better. If you are a Dali print collector you are doubtless familiar with the rumors of forgery and fraud surrounding much of Dali's print ouevre. If you are not, the introductory material in this book will help to bring you up to speed.

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Dali : Catalogue Raisonne of Prints II Lithographs

by: Salvador Dali, Ralf Michler, Lutz W. Lopsinger

This book was a rather daring undertaking. As you probably know many years and many lines of print were spent decrying the plethora of Dali forgeries and photomechanical reproductions of his works printed on pre-signed paper. It was a scandal, it was scandalous, to be sure. So, for instance, when I was involved with the sale of prints by Dali, an editorical choice was made to never ever sell a Dali Lithograph for the simple reason that there was just too much stink surrounding them. In fact, I was under the impression that virtually all of his alleged work product of lithographs was phony partially because of his self-professed disdain for the medium. This book disabused me of this notion because it is full of very early and often, I hate to say it, visually exciting and beautiful works by the man that really causes one to wish to own some. This book does discuss the scandal surrounding Dali briefly, very briefly, and notes that the editors got far less cooperation from various galleries in the course of their research than they did for the first volume of the catalogue which dealt with the etcthings, etc. No mention was made of the multi-million dollar judgment against Center Art Galleries in Hawaii, for instance, that was apparently responsible for a whole boat load of the inauthentic stuff.

Amazon Price: $87.75 (as of 12/18/2009)

Dali: The Salvador Dali Museum Collection

by: Robert S. Lubar

This compact yet dazzling album, based on the collection of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., serves as an idea point of entry into the Dalian universe. Even in the early, representational, color-drenched paintings (1917-1927), one senses Dali's "violent passion for the exterior world." Then comes the sudden plunge into the irrational (1927-1928), followed by a succession of surrealist canvases in which the Catalan prestidigitator purges his fantasies, fears and obsessions. Lubar, an art professor at New York University, argues that Dali (1904-1989), too often dismissed as a reactionary, "sought nothing less than the liberation of desire through a critique of language and visuality." Judging by the evidence here, Dali's watercolors deserve to be as well known as his oils, and his sensitive, poised drawings give his febrile imagination free rein without the grandiloquence that mars some of the paintings.

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