Gala, a woman-holiday: the Russian muse of Salvador Dali

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

Elena Dyakonova, better known as Galawas a real femme fatale. The secret of her attractiveness can not be solved until now. She was not a beauty, but she knew how to intuitively recognize a spark of divine talent in men. And her name went down in history because she was the wife and muse of the genius Salvador Dali … All his life he painted her portraits, all his life he never ceased to admire her.

Little is known about the Russian period of Gala's life - perhaps because she preferred to hide some facts of her biography. She was born in Kazan, received a good education - she studied at one of the best Moscow gymnasiums. She was well versed in art, fluent in French and German. In 1912 she was sent to Switzerland for tuberculosis treatment. There she met the French poet Paul Éluard, fell in love with him, and four years later left for him in Paris.

Scandals and hoaxes were an integral part of her life. Some researchers argue that Gala never lived in Kazan, it is not known who her real father was - either the official Ivan Dyakonov, or the Moscow lawyer Dmitry Gomberg. She had several names: her father called her Lena, and her older brothers and mother preferred to call her Galya. Salvador Dali called her Gala, with an emphasis on the last syllable, translated from French - "holiday". And she really was a holiday for him: a mother, a lover, a friend, a source of inspiration, and even a personal PR manager.

At the time when Salvador Dali met Gala, she had a husband and many lovers, moreover, she was ten years older than him. But that didn't stop him. Dali claimed that he recognized in her those Russian girls whom he had once seen in his dreams. Gala said that her first husband, Paul Eluard, is a talent and Salvador Dali is a genius. And she went to him without hesitation.

“Gala pierced me like a sword directed by Providence. It was the ray of Jupiter, as a sign from above, indicating that we must never give up, - wrote Salvador Dali. - The most important thing in the world is Gala and Dali. Then one Dali. And in third place are all the others. I love Gala more than my mother, more than my father, more than Picasso, and even more money."

Journalist Frank Whitford wrote: "Helpless in everyday life, an extremely sensual artist was captivated by a tough, calculating and desperately striving upward predator, which the surrealists dubbed the Gala Plague."

Having lived together since 1929, Dali and Gala registered their marriage in 1934, and got married only in 1958, after the death of her first husband. They traveled a lot and repeated the marriage procedure in every country. At the same time, they always had an open relationship. Dali wrote: “I allow Gala to have as many lovers as she wants. I even encourage her because it excites me."

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