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The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí book cover
The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí
1997
First Published
3.90
Average Rating
960
Number of Pages
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.
Avg Rating
3.90
Number of Ratings
189
5 STARS
28%
4 STARS
42%
3 STARS
25%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
1%
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Author

Ian Gibson
Ian Gibson
Author · 8 books

Ian Gibson (born 21 April 1939) is an Irish author and Hispanist known for his biographies of Antonio Machado, Salvador Dalí, Henry Spencer Ashbee, and particularly his work on Federico García Lorca, for which he won several awards, including the 1989 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography. His work, La represión nacionalista de Granada en 1936 y la muerte de Federico García Lorca (The nationalistic repression of Granada in 1936 and the death of Federico García Lorca) was banned in Spain under Franco. Born into a Methodist Dublin family, he was educated at Newtown School in Waterford and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin. He became a professor of Spanish literature at Belfast and London universities before moving to Spain. His first novel, Viento del Sur (Wind of the South, 2001), written in Spanish, examines class, religion, family life, and public schools in British society through the fictitious autobiography of a character named John Hill, an English linguist and academic. It won favourable reviews in Spain. Gibson has also worked in television on projects centering around his scholarly work in Spanish history, having served as a historical consultant and even acting in one historical drama. He was granted a Spanish passport in 1984.

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