Picasso called Dali "an outboard motor that's always running". Dali thought himself a genius with a right to indulge in whatever lunacy popped into his head. Painter, sculptor, writer and film maker, Salvador Dali (1904 - 1989) was one of the century's greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics - and was rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the first to apply the insights of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis to the art of painting. He brought extraordinary sensitivity, imagination and concern for precision to bear upon submerged levels of consciousness. This lively biography presents the infamous Surrealist in full colour and in his own words. His provocative ideas are all here, from the soft watches to the notorious burning giraffe. And the fantastic phenomenon that was Salvador Dali is grasped entire, and placed in his various contexts.

Robert Descharnes (born 1926) is a photographer and writer, and has made numerous films, including L'Histoire prodigieuse de la dentelliere et du rhinoceros. He has written for magazines in France and elsewhere, and has published studies of major artists, among them Antoni Gaudi and Auguste Rodin. His labours have been primarily devoted to Salvador Dali, though, and he has helped organize Dali exhibitions at major museums and galleries throughout the world. Since 1950 he has been documenting and cataloguing Dali's paintings and writings, and is now considered the leading expert on the artist. Shortly before Dali's death, Descharnes was appointed by him to take charge of the rights to his works, within the Societe Demart Pro Arte B.V., of which Descharnes is president. As a friend of the artist for over thirty years, privy to the realities behind the public image, Robert Descharnes is uniquely qualified to analyse Dali the man and Dali the myth. Gilles Neret (born 1933) is an art historian journalist and the author of numerous books on modern art. He has not only organized major retrospectives of impressionists from Renoir to Gauguin in Japan but also Millet, Rousseau, Modigliani, Leger and Kandinsky as well as the Paris Biennale, modern sculpture, Dali. He is a founding member of the Seibu Museum and Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo.