"Let us agree," Federico García Lorca wrote, "that one of man's most beautiful postures is that of St. Sebastian."

"In my 'Saint Sebastian' I remember you," Salvador Dalí replied to Lorca, referring to an essay he had just written, "and sometime I think he is you."

This lively, often funny exchange offers an unforgettable look at the complex relations between two renowned, highly influential 20th-century artists. Sebastian's Arrows presents a vibrant collection of their letters, lectures, and mementos, on the centennial of Dalí's birth.

Written between 1925 and 1936, letters and lectures bring to life a passionate friendship, a thoughtful dialogue on aesthetics, and the constant interaction of poetry and painting. From their student days in the Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, where the two waged war on cultural "putrefaction" and joked about the sacred cows of Spanish art, Dalí and García Lorca shared their thoughts on creation, modernity, and the meaning of their own art. In poetic skirmishes, they sharpened and shaped each others' work. As Lorca defended his verses of absence and elegy and his love of tradition, Dalí argued for "Clarity" and "Holy Objectivity" and, later, for the poetics of collage and the unsettling logic of Surrealism.

Christopher Maurer's helpful introduction and selection of images and texts (including a lecture previously unavailable in English) offer insight into the lives and works of two iconic artists. It was a "tragic, passionate relationship," Dalí once wrote; a friendship struck by the arrows of Saint Sebastian.