Dali

Robert Descharnes (born 1926) is a photographer and writer, and has made numerous films, including L'Histoire prodigieuse de la dentelliere et du rhinoceros. He has written for magazines in France and elsewhere, and has published studies of major artists, among them Antoni Gaudi and Auguste Rodin. His labours have been primarily devoted to Salvador Dali, though, and he has helped organize Dali exhibitions at major museums and galleries throughout the world. Since 1950 he has been documenting and cataloguing Dali's paintings and writings, and is now considered the leading expert on the artist. Shortly before Dali's death, Descharnes was appointed by him to take charge of the rights to his works, within the Societe Demart Pro Arte B.V., of which Descharnes is president. As a friend of the artist for over thirty years, privy to the realities behind the public image, Robert Descharnes is uniquely qualified to analyse Dali the man and Dali the myth. Gilles Neret (born 1933) is an art historian journalist and the author of numerous books on modern art. He has not only organized major retrospectives of impressionists from Renoir to Gauguin in Japan but also Millet, Rousseau, Modigliani, Leger and Kandinsky as well as the Paris Biennale, modern sculpture, Dali. He is a founding member of the Seibu Museum and Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo.