The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí

The most thorough and ambitious biography of Salvador Dalí ever written, a remarkable evocation of the outlandish personality, paranoia, and sexual torment lurking behind the nightmarish images that shook the world.

Drawing on extensive original research and recently discovered sources, Ian Gibson presents a daringly original portrait of one of this century's most celebrated―and infamous―artists. He provides a full narrative of Dalí's life as artist and as uninhibited exhibitionist, from his wild and troubled youth through his often rollickingly funny adventures in Paris, New York, and Hollywood to his poignant last years. Here is Dalí fully revealed through his voluminous correspondence; his novel, poems, and essays; and interviews with some of those closest to him. The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí reexamines the roles of the two most important individuals in the artist's life: the Spanish playwright and author Federico García Lorca and the enigmatic, libidinous Gala, the Russian émigré whose marriage Dalí broke up and with whom he subsequently lived in unconsummated bliss and terror. This is a truly incandescent life of the surrealist artist who caught the imagination of the twentieth century.