As a very young artist in training at the academy in Madrid, Salvador Dal worked in two distinct modes--a highly detailed naturalism (under the influence of the "return to order”) and a more avant-garde, cubist-derived style that owed much to Picasso (whom Dal visited in Paris in 1926). Then, in 1927, the twenty-three-year-old artist, influenced by Andr Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto of 1924 and the paintings of such artists as Joan Mir and Yves Tanguy, began to move towards Surrealism. In the spring of 1929, to coincide with the shooting of Buuel’s Un Chien andalou, Dal organized his first Paris exhibition, thereby gaining acclaim as a full member of the surrealist movement. This book offers a wealth of new material about Dal’s formative years as a young artist in Spain and first years in Paris. Flix Fans, one of the most knowledgeable Dal scholars in the world, transforms perceptions of the artist and shows how the stage was set for the emergence of Dal’s mature artistic personality. With a fresh and detailed assessment of Dal’s truly revolutionary work, Fans reveals the central role of the artist not only in the development of the Surrealist movement but also the course of 20th-century art.