Salvador Dali, 1904-1989

224 pp. Translated into English from the original German by Michael Hulse. Color reproductions of hundreds of Dali's works, with a chronology of his career, detailed notes and bibliography, and a list of exhibitions. "Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dali (May 11, 1904 - January 23, 1989), commonly known as Salvador Dali was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres. Dali was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Dali's expansive artistic repertoire includes film, sculpture, and photography, in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. Dali attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes" to a self-styled "Arab lineage," claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors. Dali was highly imaginative, and also had an affinity for partaking in unusual and grandiose behavior, in order to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork."