Searching for Romance in Durango: First Full Color Edition - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

Searching for Romance in Durango is a dual memoir written by friends on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Lavishly illustrated with 140 full-color photographs, it describes their unlikely meeting, the resulting decades of friendship, their adventures in the art world, and the search for a painting not seen for years.

This book is also much more. It is a travelogue and a collection of engaging anecdotes – some outrageous or uproariously funny – about famous characters encountered by the authors. And it is a fascinating educational history of the art and life of Salvador Dalí, his wife Gala, and their close associates.

Most of all, it is a celebration of what has come to be called “the six degrees of separation,” and how a series of coincidences and introductions over the years would first bring the authors together, and then interweave their lives with those of the other fascinating characters within this book.

In his mid-teens, Trevor Neal discovered a painting by Salvador Dalí in The History of Modern Art, and his life was forever transformed. Decades later, Trevor – himself now a renowned artist – is working on his 637th painting.

In 1982, on the morning of the opening of his second exhibition in the United States, Trevor was given a private tour of the world’s largest collection of Dalí’s paintings by collector and museum founder A. Reynolds Morse. Morse and his wife Eleanor were personal friends of Dalí for more than forty years and had opened the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, earlier that year.

Trevor had been introduced by mutual friends to Scott Simmons, an attorney and real estate broker. At the opening of Trevor’s exhibition, Scott and his wife were talking with Trevor when museum founders Eleanor and Ren Morse unexpectedly walked in to see Trevor's paintings. Trevor introduced them to the Morses, and four and a half years later, Scott became the Executive Director of the St. Petersburg Dalí Museum.

Now Scott is one of only a handful of people who remain to share stories about Eleanor and Ren Morse, Dalí’s archivist Albert Field, Dalí’s official photographer Meliton Casals, and the maker of the famous Dalí jewels, Carlos Alemany

In 1987, Romance in Durango was displayed at an art gallery in Manchester. Michael Barrymore, England’s most famous television personality, inquired about the painting but did not make a purchase at that time. In 1990, after Romance in Durango had been exhibited in the USA, Barrymore purchased the painting which was personally delivered by Trevor to the UK home of Michael and Cheryl Barrymore. The Barrymores eventually divorced. The painting was awarded to Cheryl and subsequently changed hands to a new owner.

Romance in Durango has not been seen since... a mystery that remains unresolved for more than 18 years.

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