Salvador Dalí’s Memories of Surrealism suite was published by Transworld Art. The total edition is 500, including sets in English and in French.
Each of the prints is a photo-lithograph (photolith) of an original mixed media artwork created using gouache and collage on paper.
Salvador Dalí created the Memories of Surrealism suite in 1971 in express reflections based upon his career to date.
Pierre Restany, a French art critic, interviewed Salvador Dalí about each of the Memories of Surrealism prints. The text appears out of order on printed introductory pages to accompany the photo-lithographs.
About Angel of Dada Surrealism, Restany recounts his interview with Dalí as follows. “He does not hold back his laughter since this is nothing but a poster and posters are the most serious epitomes of the objective amalgams of the ideas of our time. The angel of melancholy will obviously remain melancholy with its black wings but the picture itself is like a piece of gruyere cheese in an advanced state of putrefaction, or rather like a roquefort cheese as painted by Valdès Léal in the “Triumph of the Cross” at the Charity Hospital in Sevilla, or in the “Two Corpses”. Valdès Léal, painter, sculptor, engraver and architect was born and died in Sevilla, 1622-1690; he has, with constant complacency, pictured the most repulsive horrors of death: thanks to this poster he is sure to become one of the foremost surrealistic figures with the help of Mr. Rosenberg who wants to publish it. The work is now ready, it is the sweet at the end of the meal; a tribute to Juan Valdès Nica Léal who said that life is a bitter experience: death, after all, is only perhaps a sweet experience.”