“It is thought that García Lorca was shot and killed by Nationalist militia on 19 August 1936. The author Ian Gibson in his book, The Assassination of García Lorca, argues that he was shot with three others (Joaquín Arcollas Cabezas, Francisco Galadí Melgar and Dióscoro Galindo González) at a place known as the Fuente Grande (‘Great Spring’) which is on the road between Víznar and Alfacar.”
“In my ‘Saint Sebastian’ I remember you,” Salvador Dali replied to Garcia Lorca, referring to the essay on aesthetics that Dali had just written, “. . . and sometimes I think he is you. Let’s see whether Saint Sebastian turns out to be you.’”
Sebastian’s Arrows: Letters and Mementos of Salvador Dalí and Federico García Lorca.
Edited, Translated, Annotated, & Prologue by Christopher Maurer (Boston University) 24 color plates.
This exchange is but a glimpse into the complex relationship between two renowned and highly influential twentieth-century artists. Written between 1925 and 1936, the letters and lectures bring to life a passionate friendship marked by a thoughtful dialogue on aesthetics and the constant interaction between poetry and painting. From their student days in Madrid’s Residencia de Estudiantes, where the two waged war against cultural “putrefaction” and mocked the sacred cows of Spanish art, Dali and Garcia Lorca exchanged thoughts on the act of creation, modernity, and the meaning of their art. The volume chronicles how in their poetic skirmishes they sharpened and shaped each other’s work—Garcia Lorca defending his verses of absence and elegy and his love of tradition while Dali argued for his theories of “Clarity” and “Holy Objectivity” and the unsettling logic of Surrealism. Christopher Maurer’s masterful prologue and selection of letters, texts, and images (many generously provided and with the support of the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí and Fundación Federico García Lorca), offer compelling and intimate insights into the lives and work of two iconic artists. The two men had a “tragic, passionate relationship,” Dali once wrote—a friendship pierced by the arrows of Saint Sebastian.
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