Today is all about men:) no reason.. just if you look around there are so many inspiring personalities that are totally over the boundaries and so charming...
And here is
Salvador Dali... I will leave his wonderful artwork behind this time
and will bring up his dramatic passionate life... Everything about him
is magical.. and most of all I want you to know his muse Gala... I find
their relationship very passionate, full of love and inspiring...
Salvador Dalí’s wife and muse, whose real name was Elena Ivanovna
Diakonova. A mysterious and highly intuitive woman, she was able to
recognise artistic and creative genius when she saw it, and had
relations with a number of intellectuals and artists.
The truth is nevertheless that very little is known about this
personality: she had two older brothers, Vadim and Nicolai, and a
younger sister, Lidia; she spent her childhood in Moscow, and her father
died when she was eleven years old. Her mother remarried later to a
lawyer, with whom Gala related very well and thanks to whom she managed
to acquire a good education. She was a brilliant student, completing her
studies at the M.G. Brukhonenko academy for young ladies with a very
high average mark; a decree from the tsar authorised her to become a
primary school teacher and to give lessons in people’s homes. In 1912
she suffered a worsening of the tuberculosis that had afflicted her for
some time, and her family decided to have her cared for at the Clavadel
sanatorium in Switzerland, where she met Eugène Grindel (later to be
known as Paul Eluard). Their similar ages and love of reading led the
two to become firm friends. Both were discharged from the sanatorium in
1914. Gala returned to Russia and Eluard went to the war front, though
not before the couple had proposed to each other. They married in 1917,
and the following year saw the birth of the girl who was to be Gala’s
only daughter, Cécile. Eluard, who had already been revealed as poet and
had changed his surname, related with the leading figures of the
surrealist movement, and particularly the creators of the Littérature
magazine: André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon. Gala also
attended some of their meetings. In 1922 she started a relationship with
Max Ernst, which broke off in 1924. Max Ernst painted her in a number
of portraits. Also worthy of note was her friendship with the poet René
Char, and particularly with René Crevel.
It was in 1929 that she met Salvador Dalí. In April of that year Dalí
went to Paris to present the film that he had made with Luis Buñuel, Un
chien andalou, and it was there that Camille Goemans, a Belgian poet and
gallery owner, introduced Dalí to Paul Eluard. Dalí invited them to
spend the summer in Cadaqués. Goemans and a friend of his, as well as
René Magritte and his wife, and Luis Buñuel, Paul Eluard and Gala, and
the couple’s daughter Cécile, all spent some time there. When the
painter met Gala he fell in love with her. In his Secret Life, he wrote:
“She was destined to be my Gradiva (the name comes from the title of a
novel by W. Jensen, the main character of which was Sigmund Freud;
Gradiva was the book’s heroine and it was she who brought about the
protagonist’s psychological healing), the one who moves forward, my
victory, my wife”. And Gala was indeed to remain ever thereafter at the
painter’s side, so that from that time on her biography was linked with
that of Dalí.
In 1948 Dalí and Gala returned from the United States following eight
years of exile there. Dalí had achieved recognition in his own country,
and his father had come to accept his son’s relationship with a
separated Russian woman. From that time onwards, the Dalís would spend
the spring and summer in Portlligat and the autumn and winter between
New York and Paris.
In 1958 Dalí and Gala married at the Àngels chapel, near Girona. In 1968
the painter bought Gala a castle in Púbol, Girona, and it was agreed
that the painter could not go there without her prior permission in
writing to do so. Between 1971 and 1980, Gala would spend periods of
time at her castle, always in summer. It was there that Gala was buried,
following her death in 1982. Since 1996 the castle has been open to the
public as the Gala-Dalí Castle House Museum in Púbol.
via http://www.salvador-dali.org
xx
V