Tsvetaeva's childhood friend, fortune teller, inspirer of geniuses and other little-known facts about Salvador Dali's muse

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

"Muse-monster" by Salvador Dali, Gala is steeped in myths and speculation. The artist turned her image into a symbol devoid of everything human. However, Gala was a living woman of flesh and blood, with her weaknesses and oddities - and her life was not at all empty and boring before meeting Dali.

Gala is her home name

It is believed that it was Dali who gave Elena Dyakonova the nickname "Gala" - a holiday. This is not true - the name Gala with an emphasis on the last vowel was given to her by her first husband, the poet Paul Eluard. However, Gala, Galey or Galina, the muse of the king of surrealism, was called at home, almost from birth. Her mother liked this name very much, but her father was against it. One of Marina Tsvetaeva's early poems, "Mom in the Garden", is dedicated to a certain Galya Dyakonova - this is Gala. According to the most common version, Gala was born in Kazan, later the family moved to Moscow.

As a child, she was friends with the Tsvetaev sisters

And this dedication happened in a personal meeting: “Do you like my verse? I give it to you. Elena-Galina Dyakonova studied at the Bryukhonenko gymnasium with Anastasia Tsvetaeva and was very friendly with her. Gala in her youth often went to visit the Tsvetaevs - she liked the intellectual atmosphere in their house. Anastasia became very attached to Gala. With Marina, they developed a less close relationship. During a trip to Moscow, already with her husband Eluard, Gala was able to meet with her childhood friend. Unfortunately, they saw each other for the last time.

Dali is not the only genius on her track record

She was never faithful in marriage, but her husbands did not mind. Gala was in a long and dramatic relationship with the outstanding surrealist artist Max Ernst, while still married to Paul Éluard - the three of them lived openly for some time.

Gala's spouse even felt happy for some time in this triple relationship - he sincerely admired Gala's new lover, wrote about his love for Ernst. Tristan Tzara said that Eluard generally had a fetish for love triangles, he was spurred on and inspired by his wife's relationship with other men, he even found her new lovers.

This novel contributed to the creative upsurge of Max Ernst - Gala knew how and loved to "feed" men. But it all ended in mutual disappointment, Eluard had a nervous breakdown, and the union broke up. However, friendship (or love?) Ernst and Eluard passed this test.

Gal had a daughter

Gala met Paul Eluard at the age of seventeen. Their relationship lasted almost two decades, and even after the official divorce, they remained friends. In this marriage there was real passion, and exhausting boredom, devotion and betrayal - and a child. Gala had little contact with her own mother and had a poor idea of how to raise a child, she did not have any strong feelings for her daughter Cecile, and she turned her over to the care of Paul's mother.

However, for example, the fatal meeting with Dali in Cadaques took place in the presence of the girl. Cecile spent her childhood surrounded by surrealist stars - Man Ray took pictures of her, Max Ernst painted … Later Cecile avoided publicity in every possible way. The only artist with whom she had a really warm friendship was Pablo Picasso - she considered the rest of her father's friends unbearably boring. So, invisibly and quietly, without scandals and loud statements, Cecile Eluard, Gala's daughter, lived for almost a hundred years.

She was obsessed with youth and her health

Gala was treated for tuberculosis in her youth and was very afraid of a relapse. The love of money, for which Gala was condemned and ridiculed, was largely due to this anxiety. Marriages with creative people initially did not contribute to wealth, and poverty only undermined her fragile health. Gala's constant companion was a suitcase with medicines. In her mature years, being already financially secure, Gala took care of preserving her youth. She dyed brightly and heavily, wore wigs, underwent plastic surgery and underwent anti-aging therapy courses.

Numerous procedures for rejuvenation, in those years much less safe than now, negatively affected the state of health of Gala in old age. Young men were also in the treasury of youth support - the older Gala got, the younger her new lovers were - for example, Jeff Fenholt, the performer of the role of Jesus in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar.

She was hated by friends and acquaintances of her husbands

Hatred of idols' wives is a fairly common phenomenon, and today the flow of bile towards Courtney Love or Yoko Ono is quite comparable to what Gala received in her address. However, she got it not only from fans and biographers of partners, but also from her inner circle.

Even in her youth, she was obscured by the hating glances of Paul Eluard's friends - poets who survived the war and sought to create something "authentic" and "heroic." Gala, with her love for beautiful things, seemed bourgeois to them. The circle of Dadaists was generally imbued with misogyny - only the "sexless" artist Claude Caon won their respect. And the director Luis Buñuel, who shot the surreal film Andalusian Dog with Dali, openly dreamed of strangling Gala.

She had real talent as a costume designer

Gala was a gifted woman, but she preferred to be a muse rather than a creator. At the same time, from her youth, she was fond of clothes and accessories much more than an ordinary Parisian fashionista. She loved buying and remodeling things - they all seemed to her not extravagant enough. During the war, to her first husband - and despite his health problems, he was eager to go to the front - she sent sketches and sketches of how she "customized" this or that new thing. True, in the future, the authorship of all the crazy costumes of the Gala was attributed to Salvador Dali.

And she was also … a fortune-teller

Gala from a young age did not part with a deck of cards and loved to tell fortunes for the future on occasion. Surprisingly, her predictions came true. Even Dali himself often relied on Gal's visionary abilities.