In Montparnasse

Taking up where the bestselling 'crowd biography' In Montmartre left off, this is Sue Roe's lively account of the birth of Surrealism. Informative and entertaining, the book begins with Marcel Duchamp and the wonderfully eccentric and avant garde Dada movement, going on to tell the story of the moving death of Modigliani, the birth of Surrealist photography with Man Ray and his muse Kiki de Montparnasse, the love triangle between writer Paul Eluard, his wife Gala and artist Max Ernst, and finally the arrival of Salavador Dali in Paris in 1929. In Montparnasse describes the extraordinary, revolutionary work these artists undertook as much as the salons, café life friendships, rows and love affairs that were their background.