31 March 2003
The Planeta Group and the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation have signed a protocol by means of which Planeta now becomes part of the Dalí Year 2004 Promotion Council. The event was held beneath the geodesic dome of the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres.
The protocol was signed by José Manuel Lara Bosch, Managing Director of the Planeta Group, and Ramon Boixadós, Chairman of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation and of the Dalí Year 2004 Executive Committee.
The Dalí Year 2004 Promotion Council was created in order to bring together people and institutions collaborating in the event so as to lend it greater prominence by providing resources or sponsoring activities forming part of the official programme.
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The first two publishing projects to be announced as emerging from collaboration with the Planeta Group are publication of the Complete Literary Oeuvre by Salvador Dalí, and a de-luxe edition of Don Quixote de la Mancha, with Dalí’s 1945 illustrations for this work.
Through Editorial Destino, the Planeta Group will be starting from next November to publish the eight volumes of Dalí’s literary oeuvre, which will include, in addition to the better-known titles, many previously unpublished works. The Catalan-language edition of the complete literary works will receive support from the Government of Catalonia, while the Spanish-language edition will be supported by the State Cultural Commemorations Entity.
Volumes I and II will make up the section known as Autobiographical and, as in their original editions, will be illustrated in black and white. Containing nearly a thousand pages, the first volume will include: Diary: 1919-1920. My Inner Impressions and Memories, Unconfessable Confessions and The Passions according to Dalí.
The second volume, some eight hundred pages in length, will include Secret Life and Diary of a Genius.
Volume II will be devoted to poetry, narrative and theatre. As well as Hidden Faces this book has all Dalí’s poetry (including previously unpublished pieces), together with film scripts and the play Martyr, alongside various theatrical excerpts also published here for the first time.
Volumes IV and V will be devoted to essay. The former will be a compendium of Salvador Dalí’s short writings —Why is the Mona Lisa Attacked?, The Conquest of the Irrational and The Liberation of the Fingers—. Further so-far unpublished pieces will be added to these, along with various talks the painter gave in Barcelona in the 1930s. In the latter we can find The Tragic Myth of Millet’s ‘Angelus’, The Cuckolds of the Modern Old Art and Fifty Magic Secrets for Painting.
Salvador Dalí’s correspondence with some of the 20th century’s main figures will be gathered in volume VI, while volume VII will bring his best interviews together under the title Conversations with Dalí. Volume VIII, bringing up the end of this Complete Works, will be a Dalí Album with a biographical chronology, illustrations and photographs.
Prior to the release of the Figueres painter’s literary works onto the publishing market, however, in October 2003 the Planeta Group will be offering a limited print-run of 998 book-collectors’ copies of Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, in the Martí de Riquer edition, with the illustrations that Dalí produced in 1945 for a paperback edition in English. The originals of these illustrations, which belong to the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation collection, will be reproduced at true scale in this de-luxe edition.
