Salvador Dali (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful way for kids to get to know Artists
Review: Beautifully laid out and written in a way that is interesting for Kids. The Humor in this entire series makes it extremely pleasurable and easy to read.

Rating:
Summary: The life and art of the really surreal Salvador Dali
Review: Probably no other artist in the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series better suits the talents of writer/illustrator Mike Venezia than Salvador Dali. Certainly Venezia has included more of his own cartoons in this volume than any other I have encountered to date in this series. After all, Dali was a flamboyant personality who arrived at an event in a limousine filled with cauliflower and gave a talk about his art while wearing a deep-sea diving suit. But while Venezia has fun with the odder aspects of Dali's life, he deals seriously with the subject of Dali's art. One of the strengths of Venezia's books is that he uses paintings by other artists to establish the place of his subject in the world of art. Consequently young readers get to see Pablo Picasso's "Mother and Child" next to Dali's "Venus and Sailor," as evidence of Picasso's early influence on Dali. Similarly, paintings by other key Surrealist artists Max Ernst, Rene Magritte and Joan Miro show both how Dali fit into that tradition as well as his uniqueness. This fun volume includes thirteen paintings by Dali, starting with his most famous, "The Persistence of Memory." Young readers (as well as the rest of us) will enjoy not only this volume but the entire series, which provides a nice Art Appreciation course to take at your leisure.

Rating:
Summary: The life and art of the really surreal Salvador Dali
Review: Probably no other artist in the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series better suits the talents of writer/illustrator Mike Venezia than Salvador Dali. Certainly Venezia has included more of his own cartoons in this volume than any other I have encountered to date in this series. After all, Dali was a flamboyant personality who arrived at an event in a limousine filled with cauliflower and gave a talk about his art while wearing a deep-sea diving suit. But while Venezia has fun with the odder aspects of Dali's life, he deals seriously with the subject of Dali's art. One of the strengths of Venezia's books is that he uses paintings by other artists to establish the place of his subject in the world of art. Consequently young readers get to see Pablo Picasso's "Mother and Child" next to Dali's "Venus and Sailor," as evidence of Picasso's early influence on Dali. Similarly, paintings by other key Surrealist artists Max Ernst, Rene Magritte and Joan Miro show both how Dali fit into that tradition as well as his uniqueness. This fun volume includes thirteen paintings by Dali, starting with his most famous, "The Persistence of Memory." Young readers (as well as the rest of us) will enjoy not only this volume but the entire series, which provides a nice Art Appreciation course to take at your leisure.