Gala Dalí
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Gala Éluard Dalí, (7 September [O.S. 26 August] 1894 – 10 June 1982), usually known simply as Gala, was the wife of Salvador Dalí, and an inspiration for him and many other artists.
Gala was born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova[1] in Kazan, Tartary, Russia, to a family of intellectuals. Among her childhood friends was the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. As a young woman, living in Moscow, she graduated as a school-teacher in 1915.
In 1913 she was sent to a sanatorium in Clavadel, Switzerland for the treatment of tuberculosis. She met Paul Éluard while in Switzerland and married him a few years later. She moved to Paris with him and they had a daughter named Cécile, whom Gala was to mistreat and ignore all of her life.
With Éluard, Gala became involved in the Surrealist movement. Gala was an inspiration for many artists including Éluard, Louis Aragon, Max Ernst and André Breton. Breton, the "ideologue of surrealisme" later despised her, claiming she was a destructive influence on the artists she befriended.
In early August 1929, Éluard and Gala, and their friends, visited a young Surrealist painter in Spain. The painter was Salvador Dalí. An affair quickly developed between Gala and Dalí, who was about 10 years younger than Gala. They married in 1932. She underwent a hysterectomy at around this time.
She was a muse for Dalí, who said that she was the one who saved him from madness and an early death. Indeed, behind his artistic genius Dalí was a troubled, insecure, and disorganised man, and it was Gala who acted as his ruthless agent, the interface between the genius and the real world. In doing so she hurt many sensitivities, and was accused of being materialistic and a megaera. Before Dalí met Gala, he was involved in an affair with Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. However, their relationship ended when Dalí and filmmaker Luis Buñuel released the surrealist film Un Chien Andalou (1929), which Lorca interpreted as an attack on him personally. Dalí recognized that his future as an artist would be greatly enhanced if he were married to a woman such as Gala who could promote him and manage his business affairs.
Dalí's attachment to Gala was sexually poor and she, according to the accounts, had an above average sexual urge and throughout her life had numerous extramarital affairs (among them with her former husband Paul Éluard), to which Dalí did not object, but encouraged, since he was a practicer of candaulism. She had a fondness for young artists, and in her old age she often gave expensive gifts to those who associated with her.
Gala is a frequent model in Dalí's work, often in religious roles such as the Blessed Virgin Mary in the painting The Madonna of Port Lligat. Dalí's numerous paintings of her show his great love for her, and some are perhaps the most affectionate and sensual depictions of a middle-aged woman in Western art.
Gala died in Port Lligat in the early morning of 10 June 1982 and was buried in the Castle of Púbol in Girona which Dalí had bought for her.
[edit] References
- ^ Gala's correct birth name, the one that is listed in Gala's Russian diploma of school-teacher gradutation issued by the M.G. Brukhonenko Female Institute of Moscow in 1915. It adds also that she was born in Kazan on August 26, 1894 (Julian calendar) which corresponds to September 7, 1894 of the Gregorian calendar. Her religion was pravoslavian and she was the daughter of a high-ranking officer of the Russian administration. (Source: Article 'Gala Dalí: los secretos de una musa' by J.J. Navarro Arisa, "El País Semanal", Madrid, Spain, August 14, 1994.)
