"PAINTING IS AN INFINITELY MINUTE PART OF MY PERSONALITY"

DALÍ, Salvador. Les Dîners de Gala. Paris: Draeger, (1973). Thick folio (9 by 12 inches), original color-printed pictorial cloth, pictorial endpapers, original decorative dust jacket. $900.

First French edition of this extravagant, lavishly illustrated cookbook created by Dalí in honor of his wife Gala.

"When six years old I wanted to be a cook." At age 68, Dalí fulfilled that ambition in this book. His careful selection of menus and recipes, "with its precepts and its illustrations, is uniquely devoted to the pleasures of Taste. Don't look for dietetic formulas here. We intend to ignore those charts and tables in which chemistry takes the place of gastronomy. If you are a disciple of one of those calorie-counters who turn the joys of eating into a form of punishment, close this book at once; it is too lively, too aggressive and far too impertinent for you." Gala was Dalí's wife and muse. Published the same year as the first edition in English, both of which were preceded in 1971 by a portfolio of 12 colored lithographs under the same title, each reproduced in this enlarged edition. Text in French.

A fine copy.