Salvador Dali - Les Dîners de Gala. - 1973

Salvador Dalí – The Gala Dinners.
Original French edition by Draeger, 1973. Large quarto illustrated – 320 pages.
Spectacular work by Salvador Dalí devoted to gastronomy, conceived as a true surrealist object-book, in which haute cuisine recipes, pictorial compositions, photographs, collages, graphic distortions and Dalinian reflections mingle in a particularly luxurious layout.
Original French edition, printed and completed in November 1973 on the Draeger presses, a master printer in Paris, as expressly indicated by the printer’s imprint. Typography by René Toutain, with the collaboration of Max Gérard.
Large volume 31 cm × 22 cm, 320 pages,
under a remarkable illustrated spine in gold and black, enriched by polychrome compositions and large metallic relief type. The decoration continues on the second cover, giving the binding a particularly distinctive presence of 1970s editorial aesthetics.
The work was designed and materialized by Salvador Dalí and dedicated to Gala, his wife and muse. It is not merely a culinary anthology; Dalí transforms the traditional cookbook into a lush graphic work where gastronomy, erotism, dream, painting and surrealist extravagance meet.
The volume is organized into 12 chapters, with typically Dalinian titles,
The princely pinched caprices.
The cannibalisms of autumn.
The suprêmes of lilliputian discomforts.
The entre-preparations sodomized.
The Spoutniks polished with statistics maggots.
The crowned plumes.
The royal flesh.
The soft watches 1/2 sleep.
The deoxyribonucleicatavism.
The I eat GALA.
The gooseberries notches.
The delicious little martyrs.
The work includes 55 color-illustrated recipes, of which 21 recipes are provided by grande maisons of French gastronomy, notably Lasserre, Maxim’s, La Tour d’Argent and the Buffet de la Gare de Lyon.
It also includes 12 specially designed and signed hors-texte pieces by the master, as well as an extraordinarily abundant iconography: reproductions of works, surrealist compositions, color photographs, montages, drawings and typographic décors occupying whole pages or double-page spreads.
Among the gastronomic documents reproduced is the prestigious menu of the dinner offered at Persepolis on October 14, 1971, on the occasion of the 2500th anniversary ceremonies of the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus the Great.
Several spectacular double pages feature Dalí in the great Parisian gastronomic establishments, amidst sumptuously laid tables, dishes, wines, silverware and theatrical décors. Taken together, the work stands as a remarkable visual testimony to French haute cuisine of the early 1970s.
An introduction devoted to Dalí’s gastronomic thought develops a genuine philosophy of gastronomy and gastronomic theology, asserting the deliberately excessive, sensual and anticonformist character of the book.
The printer’s imprint states, Le divin Salvador Domenech Philippe Hyacinthe DALI designed and materialized this work dedicated to Gala, and recalls that the unpublished recipes were developed especially for the book, while Lasserre, Maxim’s, La Tour d’Argent and the Buffet de la Gare de Lyon contributed some of their recipes.
Format large in-4, 31 cm × 22 cm.
Pagination 320 pages.
Very abundant color and black-and-white iconography, with numerous full-page and double-page compositions.
Culinary content 55 color-illustrated recipes, including 21 from renowned gastronomic houses.
Hors-texte 12 specially designed and signed compositions by Dalí.
Publisher’s leatherette binding with spectacular gold, black and polychrome decoration.
Copy with an interior that is particularly fresh and richly colored.
The illustrations and double pages retain a striking chromatic intensity.
The gold binding shows superficial wear, small scratches and abrasions, especially visible on the reflective metallic surfaces. Some marks and small peripheral alterations are visible at corners and edges.
Presence of its original slipcase, beige-gray in tone, showing signs of time, small stains, scuffs and wear to the corners and edges.
A very decorative copy of one of Salvador Dalí’s most emblematic illustrated books, at the crossroads of bibliophilia, French gastronomy and surrealism. The luxurious Draeger printing, the Dalinian compositions, and the extraordinary photographic staging make it as much an art book as a culinary work.
The photos are integral to the description.
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