Salvador Dali was the chief exponent of Surrealism, an artistic movement begun in the late 1920s, whose chief aim was to pictorially explore the subconscious and the world of dream imagery. Its patron saint was the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud.

Dali not only created history's most popular and profound surrealist works in all mediums, but had a remarkable post-Surrealist period, which he termed Nuclear-Mysticism. Begun roughly in the mid-'40s - and deeply inspired by the advent of the atomic bomb and new discoveries in nuclear physics - this period saw Dali's creation of some 20 wall-sized masterworks that explored scientific, historical, and religious themes.

In addition to being a master painter, with a painstaking technique compared to that of Velasquez, Vermeer, and Raphael, Dali was a brilliant and inventive lithographer, etcher, autobiographer, novelist, filmmaker, designer, poet, theatre set designer and more. He was the first major artist to harness the technology of holography and stereoscopy to fine art.

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This quite magnificent dedicatory drawing was given by Dali to his official archivist, the late Albert Field, whom Dali describes in the inscription as &the last existentialist.

Dali did a significant number of drawings in books. Some were more hastily drawn sketches, while still others might more aptly be termed doodles. All are nonetheless one-of-a-kind and original, and each has its distinctive charm.

But of the present drawings, it is not overstatement to call them masterful! Especially the work on the title page. To begin with, the book is the only commercially published book by A. Reynolds Morse, who was Dali's leading patron and, together with his wife Eleanor, were the benefactors of the Salvador Dali Museum, originally of Beachwood, Ohio, and now permanently installed in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Morse collection is arguably the most important single collection of Dali works in the world.

Morse wrote and self-published quite a few volumes on Dali, but this book was his only venture in commercial publishing.

The drawings in Dali: A Study of His Life and Work combine two enormously important realities: the incredible imagination of Salvador Dali, and this Master's razor-sharp draftsmanship. The drawing was executed in 1958, a year that saw works on Dali's easel like the great Velasquez Painting the Infanta Margarita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory, and The Sistine Madonna. Dali was wearing the vestments of his Nuclear-Mystical period with all the pride and dedication of an archbishop. His creative mind and technical skill were burnished to blinding levels of excellence during this rich period in his prolific career.

It is fitting, then, that in this extraordinary book drawing, Dali - while taking on wildly erotic and phantasmagorical subject matter - has done so with the sure line of a Renaissance master. An ample-bosomed, griffin-like creature, with a snail creeping atop its backside, sports a monstrously hideous head, whose nose and lip drip like a melting watch, and the drippings land in a plate the convoluted figure is holding. From its forehead emerges a dismembered, sort of ribbed rhinoceros horn. The long cap-covered tresses are propped up by a crutch carried by a man in dress tails.

The crutch was a ubiquitous element in Dali's surrealist works, recalling the bifurcated stick he used to play with as a child, and perhaps symbolic in the present picture as a kind of anchor to the real world. As Russell Harty of the BBC declared in the 1975 film documentary, Hello, Dali: God alone knows what this man dreams about!

What must be noted in this particular dedicatory drawing is the exquisite nature of the craftsmanship. It is far tighter than many mere sketches seen in other books graced by Salvador Dali's pen. No dashed-off doodle here!

Indeed, a parallel could be drawn with the notebooks of Leonardo and other great masters, where studies and line drawings exhibited a true mastery of technique. In this case, the lover of surrealist images gets the added bonus of seeing Dali's superb technical prowess hitched to bizarre and compelling images that force us to sit up and take notice! The figure at left, and the famed Dali signature with accompanying crown round out what is simply one of the finest drawings by the hand of Dali.