Salvador Dali

The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, which had its origins in the collection of A. Reynolds Morse and Eleanor R. Morse, houses works that span Dali's (1904-1989) career, from the accomplished drawings and paintings of his youth to the surrealist paintings for which he gained fame and notoriety. In this slim volume, 40 of the museum's paintings are exquisitely reproduced in full color and accompanied by brief commentaries in which art historian Wach discusses their psychological content and their place in Dali's oeuvre. Wach's introduction, which doesn't treat Dali's work in depth but presents a readable overview of his career, outlines Dali's life and development as an artist, emphasizing his debt to Freud, the influence of his wife, Gala Eluard, his relationship to other surrealists and the sources of his complex imagery and iconography. A number of Dali's drawings are included in the introduction, and there is an extensive chronology of the artist's life and a bibliography. Wach teaches at the University of Melbourne. (Nov.)