Gala and Dali: creature of grandeur

I love her (Gala) more than my mother, more than my father, more than Picasso and even more than money...

Salvador Dali

The artist called his beloved one the ‘victorious goddess’, ‘Helen of Troy’, ‘Saint Helena’, ‘Gala Galatea Serene’. They were together for 53 years. After Gala’s death in 1982, Dali lost his will to live and seem lost and abandoned. He stopped painting and eating, became more aggressive. People around him often thought that he had lost his mind.

When Dali and Gala met in 1929 in Cadaques, he was 25 and she is 10 years older. Dali had just arrived from Paris, where he with Luis Buñuel finished editing the film "An Andalusian Dog". He invited to his place in Cadaqués two bohemian couples: the artist René Magritte and the poet Paul Éluard, with their wives. Gala, a woman of Russian origin, who at the age of 17 moved from Moscow to Switzerland, was the wife of the Paul Éluard.

It was love at first sight that turned Salvador's world upside down. He fell in love for the first time of his life. When she decided to leave Éluard to commit herself to love with a young Catalan artist, Gala could not imagine that in the future this marriage would bring them both world fame.

In his book "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship" Dali wrote: ‘Every good painter who aspires to the create authentic masterpieces must marry my wife. Thus, you are advised: the painter’s wife is called Gala. For Gala is she, creature of grandeur, who advances and who operates cures for the perverse aberrations of your spirit.’

Together, step by step, they built their way to glory: Dali was improving his talent as an artist; Gala was constantly working to ensure that her husband's name would become a true legend. Dali return the favour to Gala by perpetuating her image.‍

In 1969, the painter bought an authentic medieval castle in a tiny village near Girona for Gala, where he himself decorated the walls. Gala said that she would accept this generous gift with only one condition: Dali could not appear in the castle without her written permission. The artist was completely delighted with such a response from his beloved wife, and thus Gala became the queen of her impregnable fortress.

The famous film director Luis Buñuel, a friend of Dali, wrote: ‘Gala is the only woman he loved. Of course, he has seduced many, particularly American heiresses; but those seductions usually entailed stripping them naked in his apartment, frying a couple of eggs, putting them on the women’s shoulders, and, without a word, showing them to the door’.

During the lecture, you will find out more about the life and love of the most extraordinary couple of the 20th century.

The meeting will be held online in Russian with simultaneous translation into Spanish.

Registration