"PAINTING IS AN INFINITELY MINUTE PART OF MY PERSONALITY"

DALÍ, Salvador. Die Diners mit Gala. Berlin: Propyläen Verlag, (1975). Thick folio, original color-printed pictorial cloth, pictorial endpapers, original decorative dust jacket. $600.

First German 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." With color plates and in-text photographs and illustrations on nearly every one of the 322 pages. The colophon (translated from the German) reads, "The divine Salvador Domenech Philippe Hyacinthe Dalí conceived and materialized this work dedicated to Gala. All the recipes in this cook book, never before published, have been elaborated with great precision by a 'chef' wishing to remain in the most secret anonymity." Gala was Dalí's wife and muse. Preceded in 1971 by a portfolio of 12 colored lithographs under the same title, each reproduced in this enlarged edition, which was published in French and American issues in 1973. Text in German.

Book fine; light edge-wear, faint rubbing to colorful near-fine dust jacket.