Author: Dali, Salvador.

Publisher: Spain: Naipes-Comas.

Format: 78 process lithograph tarot cards, each with gilt edges, housed in cardboard box with three-language information booklet [Spanish, English, French], in red flocked slipcase with gilt text, 14 x 7.8cm (cards), 16 x 8.5 x 3.4cm (slipcase).

First edition.

Dali began working on a set of tarot cards in 1973 at the request of film producer Albert R. Broccoli. The cards were to be a prop in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. The cards did not make it into the film, but Dali continued to work on his tarot deck–undoubtedly with the encouragement of his wife and muse Gala, “the demonic dominatrix”–and they were published in Spain in 1984 with gilt edges, befitting of the surrealist master.

The cards include Gala as The Empress, and Dali himself as The Magician. The deck represents one of the most ambitious and complex projects of Dali’s late career. The arcanes are “filled with references to the history of art, the occult and Dali’s personal iconography…[they] reimagine traditional tarot archetypes through a surrealist lens.” Ref: The Dali Museum.

Rubbing to slipcase, box corners a little scuffed, cards near Fine with one edge slightly rubbed of gilt.