The love story of the great surrealist Salvador Dali and his rebellious muse Elena Dyakonova is incredible. It is full of unexpected twists and turns, ups and downs.
The lovers married about 50 times. In the heat of his feelings, Salvador literally renounced everything that was dear to him, declaring that Gala was dearer to him than his mother, money, and even dearer than Picasso, who served as a source of inexhaustible inspiration.
A story about how two amazing human geniuses met and fell in love.
Russian and Spanish soul
Paul Juliard introduced Dali to a girl who conquered forever
The acquaintance of Gala and Salvador happened unexpectedly, this meeting changed their lives. Salvador was 25, he was innocent and read the works of Nietzsche. He then lived in the village of Cadaques, which was located near the city of Port Aigata. The artist invited two married couples to visit: Magritte and Eluard. Paul Juliard introduced Dali to a girl who conquered him once and for all. “Meet my Russian wife Gala, I told her a lot about your work,” Paul said. Poor Salvador was speechless and could only spin around his lady of the heart.
Then, after many years, he described his beloved in the book “ secret life Salvador Dali, written by himself ":" Her body was tender, like a child's. The line of the shoulders was almost perfectly rounded, and the muscles of the waist, outwardly fragile, were athletically tense, like those of a teenager. But the curve of the lower back was truly feminine. The graceful combination of a slender, energetic torso, aspen waist and tender hips made her even more desirable. Far from her, the artist could not work - the brush did not want to remain in his hand. All Dali's thoughts were only about his friend's wife.
Live together
The divorce of Gala and Eluard took place 9 years after she met Dali. But the muse of the artist formalized relations with him only after the death of his first spouse, showing a rare sensitivity. 
Salvador did not pay a drop of his precious attention to everyday life.
Gala and Salvador settled in Paris. The paintings painted during this period were striking in their lightness. They changed the world and ideas about what an artist and his works should be like. Salvador did not pay a drop of his precious attention to everyday life: Gala took over everything that was daily and ordinary. She also sold paintings. Once Gala helped out 29,000 francs for a painting that had not yet been painted: such was Dali's authority among connoisseurs.
It is known that the artist had an ocelot and an anteater as pets. 
The audience was delighted and amazed at various kinds of eccentricities on the part of the famous couple. The long mustache and bulging eyes of El Salvador only confirmed the fact that next to genius there is always madness.
Gala often poses for her husband, she is present in his paintings both in the allegory of sleep, and in the image of the Mother of God, and Elena the Beautiful. Sometimes interest in Dali's surrealistic paintings begins to fade, and Gala comes up with new ways to get the rich to fork out. So Dali began to create original gizmos, and this brought him serious success. Now the artist was sure that he knew exactly what surrealism really was. "Surrealism is me!" he said.
Behind every great man was a great woman. For Salvador Dali, this was Gala, which he idolized. In the dedication to the book "The Diary of a Genius" Dali writes: "I dedicate this book to MY GENIUS, my victorious goddess GALA GRADIVA, my ELENA OF TROJAN, my HOLY ELENA, my brilliant, like the smooth surface of the sea, GALE GALATEA SERENE".
Salvador Dali was afraid of contact with women, but he could talk about them from the point of view of a great connoisseur of female beauty. Here is one of his arguments from the book "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, told by himself": "At that time, I took an interest in elegant women. And what is an elegant woman? ... So, an elegant woman, firstly, despises you, and secondly, cleanly shaves her armpits ... I have never met a woman who is both beautiful and elegant - these are mutually exclusive characteristics.In an elegant woman, one can always feel the edge of her ugliness (of course, not pronounced) and beauty, which is noticeable, but nothing more ... So, the face of an elegant woman does not need beauty, but her hands and legs should to be impeccably, breathtakingly beautiful and - as far as possible - open to the eye. The chest does not matter at all. If it is beautiful - fine, if not - it is regrettable, but in itself it does not matter. As for the figure, I present one thing to her an indispensable requirement for elegance is the pattern of the hips, steep and lean, if I may say so.You can guess them under any clothes, they seem to challenge.You probably think that the pattern of the shoulders is equally important?Nothing like that. I admit any, if only to worry. Eyes - This is very important! Eyes must at least seem intelligent. An elegant woman cannot have a stupid expression on her face, which is the most characteristic of a beauty and harmoniously harmonizes wonderfully with ideal beauty ... "
Dali met his Russian muse in the summer of 1929, when he was 25 years old. But he dates his first memories of her back to the time of his studies in the first class with Senor Treiter: “... It was in the wonderful theater of Senor Treiter that I saw something that turned my whole soul upside down - I saw a Russian girl, whom I fell in love with at that very moment. Her image imprinted in every cell of my being from the pupils to the fingertips. My Russian girl, wrapped in white fur, was carried off somewhere by a troika - almost miraculously she escaped from a pack of ferocious wolves with burning eyes. She looked at me without looking away, and there was such pride in her face that her heart sank with admiration. ..That was Gala? I never doubted it - that was her."
Gala was the wife of Paul Eluard, a French poet. Dali and Gala saw each other - and after the first meeting they did not part for 53 years: they were separated by Gala's death in 1982.
Gala means "holiday" in French. She really became a holiday of inspiration for Salvador Dali. The main model for the painter.
The life of Elena Ivanovna Dyakonova, who went down in world art history as a Gala, is an exciting novel.
Elena Dyakonova was born in Kazan in 1894, therefore, she was older than Salvador Dali not by 12, as some claimed, but by exactly 10 years. His father died early, he was a modest official. Mother remarried a lawyer, and when Elena was 17 years old, the family moved to Moscow. She studied at the gymnasium with Anastasia Tsvetaeva, who left her verbal portrait, and it will be very interesting to peer into it:
"In a half-empty classroom, a thin, long-legged girl is sitting on a desk in short dress. This is Elena Dyakonova. Narrow face, blond braid with a curl at the end. Unusual eyes: brown, narrow, slightly set in Chinese. Dark thick eyelashes of such length that, as their friends later claimed, you could put two matches next to them. In the face of stubbornness and that degree of shyness, which makes the movements abrupt.
In her youth, Gala was a sickly teenager, and in 1912 she was sent to Switzerland to be treated for tuberculosis. In the Clavadel sanatorium, the Russian girl met the young French poet Eugene-Emile-Paul Grandel. His father, a wealthy real estate dealer, sent his son to a sanatorium to be cured... of poetry. Grandel (later he took a different name - Eluard) did not recover from poetry, but Gala got rid of tuberculosis, but both were overcome by another ailment, much more dangerous - they fell in love with each other. It was then that she would call herself Gala - with an emphasis on the last syllable. Perhaps from the French word for "cheerful, lively"?
It was a real passionate romance that ended in marriage. But first, the lovers had to part, Eluard went to France, Gala to Russia, but they continued their love in the epistolary genre, through an exchange of letters. "My dear lover, my darling, my dear boy! Gala wrote to Eluard. - I miss you like something irreplaceable". She addressed him as a "boy", and sometimes even as a child - this Freudian appeal said that Elena had a strong maternal beginning, and she always loved men younger than herself, she wanted to be not only a lover, but also a mother . To patronize, instruct, groom ...
Eluard's father was categorically against his son's connection with a sick and capricious girl from a cold and mysterious Russia. "I don't understand why you need this Russian girl? asked the poet's father. - Don't you have enough Parisians?". But the fact of the matter is that the Russian girl was special.
In the spring of 1916, Elena Dyakonova decided to take fate into her own hands and went to the coveted Paris. She was in her 22nd year. Due to the groom's service in the army, the wedding was delayed, but nevertheless took place (Gala achieved her goal!) - in February 1917 in the church of St. Genevieve, whose walls remembered Joan of Arc. The parents of Paul Eluard presented the newlyweds with a huge bed made of bog oak. "On it we will live and on it we will die", - said Eluard and was mistaken: they died separately.
Paul Eluard had a great influence on the Gala. He turned a modest Russian admirer of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky into a real woman, almost a fatal “vamp” (she had all the makings for this), and she, in turn, becoming his muse, constantly inspired him to create more and more new poems.
And yet the romantic role of the poet's wife is not in the spirit of Gala. She openly admitted: "I will never be just a housewife. I will read a lot, a lot. I will do whatever I want, but at the same time maintain the attractiveness of a woman who does not overdo herself. manicured nails.
A year after the marriage, a daughter, Cecile, was born. Gala and Paul adored their daughter, but still a normal family did not work out. Paul Eluard could not sit still, separations and trips for her husband did not contribute to domestic happiness. There was mutual dissatisfaction with each other. Stormy quarrels were replaced by no less violent declarations of love. "We grew into each other" Elena thought so. But the ingrowth still turned out to be not so strong. At the same time, one should not forget that Paul Eluard was a poet, and, therefore, looked at the world with different eyes than ordinary people. Let's put it this way: he looked with crazy eyes at a crazy world. And accordingly, he built a relationship with his wife. He liked, for example, to show photographs of naked Elena to his friends, and she gradually entered the role of the poet's muse, not as pure as the sinful one. It is no coincidence that soon formed love triangle: Elena - Paul Eluard - artist Max Ernst.
The future Gala quickly learned what the freedom of love means, and immediately took advantage of its fruits. So before meeting with Salvador Dali, Gala was already quite a woman who knew what she needed.
In August 1929, Paul Eluard with his wife Elena (she is 35 years old) and daughter Cecile (she is 11 years old) went from Paris by car to Spain, to the fishing village of Cadaques, to visit the young Spanish artist Salvador Dali (he is 25 years old). The poet met Dali at the Bal Gabarin nightclub in Paris and received an invitation to relax in the outback, away from the noise.
On the way to Spain, Eluard enthusiastically told his wife about Dali's unusual work and about his shocking film Andalusian Dog.
"He did not stop admiring his dear Salvador, as if on purpose he pushed me into his arms, although I did not even see him", - Gala later recalled. The artist's house was located outside the village, on the shore of a crescent-shaped bay. It was painted white, with eucalyptus and flaming geraniums growing in front of it, standing out brightly against the black gravel.
To impress the new guest, about whom he had heard something, the artist decided to appear before her in an extravagant form. Why he slashed his silk shirt, shaved his armpits and dyed them blue, rubbed his body with an original cologne made from fish glue, goat droppings and lavender to activate sensory effects. He stuck a red geranium behind his ear and was about to go out to the guests in such an irresistible form, on the beach, when he saw Eluard's wife in the window. She seemed to the artist the height of perfection. He was especially impressed by Elena's face, strict and arrogant, as well as the boyish body and buttocks, about which Eluard wrote: "They fit comfortably in my hands." The eyes were also hurt. Wet and brown, large and round, they, according to the same Eluard, had the ability to "penetrate through walls."
Dali washed off all the paint and appeared on the beach almost an ordinary person. He went up to Elena and suddenly realized that in front of him was his only and real love. The realization of this came to him like an insight, like a flash, which is why he could not talk to her normally, because he was attacked by convulsive, hysterical laughter. He couldn't stop. Elena looked at him with undisguised curiosity.
Gala was not a beauty, but she had great charm, female magnetism, vibes emanated from her that bewitched men. It is no coincidence that the French publisher, art collector Pierre Argille, answering journalists' questions, said: "This woman had an extraordinary attraction. Her first husband, Eluard, until his death wrote her the most tender love letters. And only after he died in 1942, Dali and Gala officially got married. Salvador drew her endlessly. To be honest, she was not so young for a model, but artists, you know, are not easy people, since she inspired him..."
In his book The Secret Life, Dali writes:
“She admitted that she took me for a nasty and unbearable type because of my varnished hair, which gave me the appearance of a professional Argentine tango dancer ... In my room I always went naked, but if I had to go to the village, for an hour I dressed myself in immaculate white trousers, fantastic sandals, silk shirts, a necklace of fake pearls and a bracelet on my wrist."
"She started to see me as a genius, - Dali further admitted. - Half crazy, but possessing great spiritual power. And she was waiting for something - the embodiment of her own myths. Thought I might be able to be that incarnation."
Gala version: "I knew right away that he was a genius". Eluard was talented, and Dali was a genius, and Elena Dyakonova-Eluard immediately identified this. She had an innate artistic flair.
And what happened next? And then Gala allegedly told Salvador Dali a "historical phrase": "My little boy, we will never leave each other". She firmly decided to connect her life with the artist Dali and leave the poet Eluard. In fact, she left not only her husband, but also her daughter. What turned out to be more in this decision? Adventurism or deep calculation? It's hard to answer.
What was Paul Eluard to do? He packed his bags and left the refuge of Salvador Dali, having received a kind of compensation for the loss of his wife in the form of his own portrait (Portrait of Paul Eluard). Dali explained the idea of its creation as follows: "I felt that I was entrusted with the duty to capture the face of the poet, from whose Olympus I stole one of the muses."
At first, Gala and Salvador lived together unofficially, and only after the death of Eluard did they officially get married. They got married on August 8, 1958, 29 years after they first met. The ceremony was private, almost secret. It was, of course, a strange marriage in all worldly senses, but not in a creative one. Sensual Gala, who even at the time of Dali did not want to remain a faithful wife, and a virgin artist who was terribly afraid of intimacy with a woman. How did they get along with each other? Obviously, Dali turned his sexual energy into creative energy, and Gala realized her sensuality on the side. As the Spanish journalist Antonio D. Olano testifies: "She really was insatiable. Gala tirelessly pursued the young men who posed for Dali, and often got her way. Dali was also insatiable, but only in his imagination."
In everyday life, they turned out to be an almost perfect couple, as often happens with completely different people. Salvador Dali is an absolutely impractical, timid, notorious person who was afraid of everything - from riding in elevators to concluding contracts. Regarding the latter, Gala once said: "In the morning, El Salvador makes mistakes, and in the afternoon I correct them by tearing up the treaties he signed lightly."
This surrealistic Madonna in everyday affairs was a cold and rather rational woman, so with Dali they represented two different areas: Ice and fire.
"Gala pierced me like a sword directed by providence itself- wrote Salvador Dali. - It was a ray of Jupiter, as a sign from above, indicating that we should never part."
Before meeting with Gala, the artist was only on the threshold of his own glory. This woman helped him step over the threshold and enjoy the sparkling halls of worldwide popularity. Gal's appearance coincided with a break with the Surrealist group. In fact, it was the Gala that took Salvador Dali away from the aesthetic control of Breton and his entire company. But it didn't happen right away.
"Soon you will be the way I want you to be", she announced to him, and the artist believed her. "I blindly believed everything she told me."
But Gala not only predicted, she selflessly and selflessly helped him, looked for rich sponsors, organized exhibitions, and sold his paintings. "We never gave up in the face of failure., Dali noted. - We got out thanks to the strategic dexterity of Gal. We didn't go anywhere. Gala sewed her own dresses, and I worked a hundred times more than any mediocre artist."
From a Parisian who found pleasure in the entertainment of the bohemia, Gala turned into a nanny, secretary, manager of a genius artist, and then into the mistress of a huge empire, whose name is Dali. The empire was being pieced together. When there were no pictures, Gala forced Dali to do various crafts: to develop models of hats, ashtrays, decorate shop windows, advertise certain goods ... You can say that she kept Dali under constant financial and creative pressure. And it is possible that such an appeal was necessary for a weak-willed and poorly organized person, such as Salvador Dali was. Of course, this did not go unnoticed, and the press often represented Gala as the embodiment of evil, reproached her for being cruel, greedy and immoral. According to Olano, Gala squandered money right and left and did it very cheerfully, but already when the Dali empire began to prosper and money flowed like a river from everywhere.
Journalist Frank Whitford in The Sunday Times simply called Dali's muse a predator. He wrote in a newspaper in the summer of 1994: "The family couple Gala - Dali to some extent resembled the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Helpless in everyday life, an extremely sensual artist was captivated by a tough, prudent and desperately upward predator, which the surrealists dubbed the Gala Plague. They also said about her that her her gaze penetrates through the walls of bank vaults. However, in order to find out the state of Dali's account, she did not need X-ray abilities: the account was offended. She simply took the defenseless and, undoubtedly, gifted Dali and turned him into a multimillionaire and a world-famous "star" Even before the marriage in 1934, Gala managed to ensure that crowds of wealthy collectors began to besiege their house, eager to acquire relics consecrated by the genius of Dali.
Dali and Gala liked to emphasize the brilliance and significance of their public life with the help of photographs: this famous beautiful extravagant couple has always been the focus of photographers and unnecessarily often become the object of a photo hunt.
In 1934, the Dali couple went to the USA - it was an exceptionally correct move, dictated by Gal's amazing intuition, she definitely felt that it was the Americans who would like and afford Dali's talent. And she was not mistaken: in the USA, Salvador Dali was waiting for a sensational success - the country was seized by a "surreal fever". In honor of Dali, surreal balls with masquerades were held, at which guests appeared in costumes, as if inspired by the artist's fantasy - extravagant, provocative, funny. The couple returned home rich and very famous: America transferred Dali's talent to highest level- into genius. A second trip to the US in 1939 further strengthened the initial success.
Two circumstances contributed to the rapid growth of Dali's popularity across the ocean - an unsurpassed ability to arrange public scandals and a partial revision of artistic principles, which made the works of the Spanish surrealist more accessible to the general public.
In America, spouses live all the war and the first post-war years. With the help of Dali, of course, Gala arranges exhibitions, gives lectures, paints portraits of wealthy Americans, illustrates books, writes scripts, librettos and costumes for ballet and opera productions, decorates the windows of luxury stores on Fifth Avenue in New York and the pavilions of international fairs, collaborates with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney, tries his hand at photography and arranges surrealistic balls. In short, gushing with might and main! ..
"Worldwide- writes Dali, - and especially in America, people are burning with the desire to know what is the secret of the method by which I managed to achieve such success. And this method really exists. It's called the paranoid-critical method. For more than thirty years I have invented it and have been using it with constant success, although to this day I have not been able to understand what this method is. In general, it could be defined as the strictest logical systematization of the most delusional and insane phenomena and matters in order to give a tangibly creative character to my most dangerous obsessions. This method works only if you own a gentle motor of divine origin, a certain living core, a certain Gala - and she is the only one in the whole world ... ".
In the late 1940s, the couple returned to Europe in triumph. Fame, money - everything is in abundance. Everything is fine, except for one thing: Gala is getting old. However, she does not give up and is still a model for numerous Dali paintings. He constantly painted her in the image of a mythical woman, a kind of "Atomic Leda" and even with the face of Christ. In the famous painting "The Last Supper" you can recognize the features of Gala. And all because the artist did not get tired of idolizing his muse. Gala, Gradiva, Galatea, my talisman, my lay, my gold, olive - this is only a small part of the names that the painter gave to his muse and wife. High-sounding titles and sophisticatedly sensual nicknames were, as it were, part of the "surreality" in which the spouses lived. In one of the paintings by the artist, Christopher Columbus, having stepped onto the shores of the New World, carries a banner with the image of Gala and the inscription: "I love Gala more than my mother, more than my father, more than Picasso and even more money".
As for the mother - this is not a slip of the tongue. Salvador Dali, who lost his mother early and did not receive her love, subconsciously searched for his mother and found her ideal expression in Gala, but she, in turn, found a son in him (she loved her daughter Cecile less, and it was no coincidence that she was raised by Paul's grandmother Eluard).
As Dali wrote in his diary:
"Like a mother to a child suffering from lack of appetite, she patiently repeated: - Admire, little Dali, what a rare thing I got. Just try it, it's liquid amber, and also unburnt. They say Vermeer himself wrote it."
Sister Gala Lydia, who once visited the spouses, noted that she had never seen a more tender and touching attitude of a woman to a man in her life: “Gala fusses with Dali like a child, reads to him at night, makes him drink some necessary pills, sorts out his nightmares with him and dispels his suspiciousness with endless patience. Dali threw hours at another visitor - Gala rushes to him with soothing drops "God forbid, he'll have a seizure." Could the “woman - the embodiment of evil”, the “greedy Valkyrie”, as the journalists called her, hold on like that?
The father and sister of Salvador Dali, who strictly professed all the canons of the Catholic faith, could never forgive him for antics with a portrait of his mother and marriage with Gala, so the Italian family of Giuseppe and Mara Albaretto, with whom Dali had many years of friendship, their daughter Christina, became a real family for him. became Dali's goddaughter.
Mara Albaretto: "He was extremely eccentric, extravagant. When asked why he portrayed Gal's beloved wife with two chops on her back, he simply answered: "I love my wife and I love chops; I don't understand why I can't draw them together"...
Salvador Dali and Gala together organized their sensational "happenings", erotic spectacles with a touch of scandal. Those wishing to take part in them were more than enough. The glory of the artist attracted many women to him. Once they passed indifferently past, and then there was no end to them, this happens quite often with famous people. Ladies, with or without a name, sought dates with Dali. Often he agreed, but all these dates took place according to the script of the artist. So, the artist lovingly undressed one Danish lady, and then decorated it with lobsters and other marine life for a long time. In the end it turned out beautiful. Dali was pleased and kindly said goodbye to the woman. Whether she was satisfied is the question.
The intimate life of the spouses forever remained a secret. In it, in all likelihood, there was no such thing as fidelity. For Gala, it was a free marriage, and she was free to choose her lovers. "Not free, my dear, not free!". But this applies to her young and mature years. Later, she had to pay herself.
When in 1964 Galya turned seventy years old. She dyed her hair, sometimes already put on a wig and thought about plastic surgery. But the older she got, the more she wanted love. She tried to seduce anyone who got in her way. "El Salvador doesn't care, each of us has our own life", - she convinced her husband's friends, dragging them into bed.
Her lover was the young singer Jeff Fenholt, one of the leading men in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. They said that it was Gala who caused his breakup with his young wife, who had just given birth to his child. Gala took an active part in the fate of Jeff, created conditions for him to work and even gave him a luxurious house on Long Island. It was her last love. Of course, love for Salvador Dali does not count.
And yet Gala remains a mystery. In numerous interviews that she gave over half a century, she stubbornly did not talk about her relationship with Dali. All her letters to Eluard ex-husband destroyed by asking her to do the same with hers, so that "to deprive curious descendants of looking into their intimate life" . True, Gala, according to the artist, left an autobiography on which she worked for 4 years. Gala kept a diary in Russian. Where these priceless documents are now is unknown. Maybe, art world waiting for new finds and new discoveries.
The medieval castle of Pubol (near Porta Lligata) became a manifestation of Dali's passionate love. Gala received such a gift at the age of 74, when their marital relationship became more complicated. Dali increasingly rested in the company of fashion model Amanda Lear. However, he tried not to move away from Gala, who wanted peace and monastic peace. Dali was able to visit her only with her written permission.
The last years of Gala were poisoned by illnesses and rapidly impending senile infirmity. "Day of death she said, will be the happiest day of my life.". It came on June 10, 1982. Gala lived for 88 years. Stormy and unique.
Aleksey Medvedenko gave the following information to the Sovetskaya Kultura newspaper from Madrid:
“Dali intended to fulfill his wife’s last will: to bury her in Pubol, located 80 kilometers from Port Lligat, in a castle that Dali had given to his beloved at one time. However, an ancient Spanish law issued during the plague epidemic forbade transporting the body without permission Authorities Dali violates the law for the sake of Gala. The naked body of the deceased was wrapped in a blanket and placed in the back seat of the Cadillac. Arturo gets behind the wheel. They are accompanied by a sister of mercy. They agreed that if they were stopped by the police, they would say that Gala died on the way to the hospital. The famous "Cadillac" Dali, a witness to many happy trips to France and Italy, turned into a hearse. An hour later, he delivers the deceased to Pubol. Everything was already prepared for burial. A coffin with a transparent lid with the body of Gala was buried in the crypt of the castle on June 11 at six o'clock in the evening in the presence of Dali himself ... ".
The 78-year-old Dali refused to attend the funeral.
Salvador Dali survived the Gala by 7 years.
35 years ago, on June 10, 1982, a woman passed away, whose name entered the history of art thanks to Salvador Dali, whose wife and muse she has been for many years. She managed to become for him at the same time a mother, lover and friend, absolutely irreplaceable and adored. But Dali was far from the only man for her. Gala never denied herself her desires and forced the artist to indulge her every whim.
Elena Dyakonova (that was her real name) left Russia in 1912. She fell ill with consumption and was sent to a Swiss sanatorium for treatment, where she met the French poet Eugene Grendel. He lost his head from her and decided to marry, against the will of his parents, who considered this marriage a misalliance. He dedicated poems to her and published on her advice under the sonorous pseudonym Paul Eluard. He called her Gala - "holiday".
Gala already had clear ideas about how she wants to see her future in France. “I will shine like a cocotte, smell of perfume and always have well-groomed hands with manicured nails.” And although, according to contemporaries, she was not beautiful even in her youth, she knew how to make a splash in society. This was due to unshakable confidence in himself and his charms, as well as the ability to intrigue the public. She appeared in a Chanel suit with a deck of cards in her purse and, declaring herself a medium, began to predict the future. The men called her the "witchy Slav" and reacted to her as if they were really under the influence of magic.
The German artist and sculptor Max Ernst could not resist her charms. Gala not only did not hide the affair from her husband, but also convinced him of the need to live together. She always preached the ideas of free love, and considered jealousy a stupid prejudice.
At the time of her acquaintance with the young artist Salvador Dali, she was 36 years old. He was 11 years younger, never entered into intimate relationships with women and was terribly afraid of them. Gala awakened in him feelings that he had not experienced before. According to him, she not only aroused passion, but also kindled Creative skills. He called her "the demoness of my genius."
Gala not only gave a powerful source of inspiration to the artist, but also was his manager, the creator of Dali's "brand". Among her acquaintances there were many influential and wealthy people whom she offered to invest in her husband's work. He signed the paintings "Gala Salvador Dali", no longer thinking of his existence without his muse, and she convinced him: "Soon you will be the way I want to see you, my boy."
However, not everyone shared the admiration of the artist. The press wrote about him and his muse: “Helpless in everyday life, an extremely sensual artist was captivated by a tough, prudent and desperately striving for the top predator, which the surrealists dubbed the Gala Plague.” She was called the "greedy Valkyrie" and the "greedy Russian slut."
Gala never denied herself pleasure, to which her husband reacted calmly: “I allow Gala to have as many lovers as she wants. I even encourage her because it turns me on.” And she said: "It's a pity that my anatomy does not allow me to make love with five men at once." And the older she got, the younger were her lovers, and the greater was their number.
It was said that "her boys are worth a fortune" - she showered them with money and gifts, bought them houses and cars. One day, one of them, Eric Samon, was having dinner with her at a restaurant, while his accomplices were trying to steal her car. But 22-year-old William Rothlein, whom Gala helped get rid of drug addiction, was really in love with her. But after he failed Fellini's audition, her passion faded immediately. And William soon died of a drug overdose. Singer Jeff Fenholt, who starred in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, received a $1.25 million house and Dali paintings as a gift from his mistress, and then denied any connection with her.
When she felt the approach of old age, she asked Dali to buy for her a medieval castle in Pubol, where she arranged real orgies. And the husband was allowed to be there only by special written invitation. And even this, according to his confession, he liked: “This condition flattered my masochistic inclinations and led me to complete delight. Gala has turned into an impregnable fortress, which it has always been. Close intimacy and, especially, familiarity can extinguish any passion. Restraint of feelings and distance, as the neurotic ritual of chivalrous love shows, intensify passion.
The artist until the end of his days loved his muse, although he often appeared in public with other women:.
“Only idiots think that I follow the advice I give to others. Why? I'm not at all like the others."
Dali's first love.
Many people know Salvador Dali as a mature eccentric master - a great surrealist with a protruding mustache, drawing elephants on stilts, flowing clocks and many different obscenities in his paintings. He is famous for his outrageousness - he was a bold subverter of social norms and really is not like the others.
But Dali was not always like this, his modest youth in his father's conservative house, where he felt squeezed and depressed, did not delight the artist himself. He rebelled, he left, he subverted, and friendship with other young talents, who later became famous writers, artists and directors - Garcia Lorca, Buñuel, Miro and Picasso. Salvador loved freedom, fame and money, and did not hide it. Life gave him a chance in the form of a beautiful woman, Russian by birth, Elena Dmitrievna Dyakonova (Gala), who, being at that time the wife of the poet Paul Eluard, very soon became a friend of life and a real muse of Dali.
Young Dali was lucky with this woman, who was much older, but believed in his genius.
Look how cute they are - Gala and Dali, when they just sit without posturing))
Naturally, the relatives were against this. unequal marriage, and dad cursed El Salvador, the first time they lived together they rented a fishing hut on the seashore. But Gala went to the city market and sold pictures of Dali that the public liked. At home, she tactfully advised on what to focus on and skillfully guided him to success. Dali was insanely brilliant and longed for fame and money, like a surrealist, he went to all sorts of outrageous antics to attract a bored audience, but of course he was not truly crazy. "The difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad
" he said.
The artist adored his Gala, idolized, firmly believed in her intuition and painted all his life. She also called him "Baby Dali" and always believed in his genius. Of course, it was an unusual marriage, in Dali's diaries you can read many interesting details about their non-standard personal life, in particular, he often called himself a pervert and voyeur, but added that this is just normal for an artist.
You can treat this couple differently, but I am FOR such creative unions, age is not important.
Dali's second love
Dali's second love chiefs- like a true Nietzschean, he had pathologically tender feelings for the strong leaders of this world and often thought about them. For example, he wrote in the Diary about how he dreams of drawing Lenin's three-meter buttock on a crutch and Hitler's gentle erotic back, etc., all in his own style. The artist was attracted by all extraordinary personalities, which he considered himself to be. In particular, the famous acute-angled mustache on his face, he brought in defiance " boring mustache Nietzsche"...
You can argue about a lot about Dali, but the iconostasis on the mustache is good!))))
Not much has been invented since the time of Salvador Dali. Until now, his jokes are remembered and his phrases are quoted, and in modern fashionable restaurants in the capitals, a festive served dinner is served on naked men and women. female bodies. So did he - the main performer of the twentieth century.
Third love.
Dali adored cinema - Together with another genius, he made several films that still amaze the audience. The most famous of them is a surreal 20-minute silent b.w. a film - in which a close-up of the entire frame of the eye is cut with a razor and vague images flash, illustrating the theory of dreams by Sigmund Freud. He also later worked with friends on the films The Golden Age and Spellbound. Well, there’s no need to talk about how Dali himself loved to pose for the camera until the end of his life - more than a hundred photo portraits of a genius from various authors and newsreels that can be found on YouTube have survived to this day.
Salvador Dali, I think, was not so much a great artist as a brilliant actor who played flawlessly the role of "genius madman", but, here everyone has reason to think))
Your Asya Nemchenok.
* More interesting materials about Culture and Art on
Great love stories: Salvador Dali and Gala
Analysis of the compatibility of horoscopes (synastry)
Anatoly Mukhtiyarov
Looking through famous couples, I saw that many great love stories can serve as clear examples of the practical implementation of so many types of energy relationships between horoscopes. As a result, I decided to describe the most interesting and significant, from my point of view, elements of famous couples and show how the relationship between horoscopes at the energy level can manifest itself in people's lives (in this case world famous and famous).
The personalities of Salvador Dali and Gala (Elena Dyakonova) and their relationship are so non-standard that many will consider this love story not so great to classify it as such, but given the fact that Salvador Dali was a great and world-famous artist and he became one of them only thanks to Gala, I think this love story is really great (although this couple was quite eccentric and unusual). Behind every great man was a great woman. For Salvador Dali, this was Gala, whom he idolized, and for whom she was at the same time mother, lover, friend, muse and producer, who made Salvador Dali a world star of fine arts. Gala and Salvador Dali are one of the most famous, constant, strange, eccentric, devoted, original and unforgettable couples of world bohemia. Salvador is a genius, Gala is his constant muse...
In the dedication to the book "The Diary of a Genius" Salvador Dali writes: "I dedicate this book to MY GENIUS, my victorious goddess GALA GRADIVA, my ELENA OF TROJAN, my HOLY ELENA, my brilliant, like the smooth surface of the sea, GALA GALATEA PEACEFUL."
Salvador Dali's birth data is taken from Rodin's database.
Salvador Dali
FIGUERAS, CATALONIA, SP (42n16 2e58)
The time of birth of Elena Dyakonova (Gala) is unknown.
I looked at the horoscope with a birth time of 11 o'clock, because. this version of the horoscope seems to me to fully describe the personality and character of Elena Dyakonova (Ascendant in Scorpio in conjunction with Uranus, Sun-Mercury conjunction in Virgo in the 10th house, Moon in the 2nd house, horoscope ruler Pluto and Neptune in the 8th house ). In addition, this time is close to noon (for which cosmograms are usually considered at an unknown time of birth).
Gala (Elena Dyakonova)
Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia (55n49 49e08)
The basis of the horoscope of Salvador Dali is the T-square as part of the ruler of the horoscope of the Moon in Aries (in conjunction with the MS), Uranus and Neptune. It was the influence of this configuration that made Salvador Dali an impractical, non-standard, sensitive, half-mad person, constantly confusing reality and fantasy. And it was this configuration that made him a genius of surrealism and a world outrageous star (the connection of the ruler of the horoscope of the Moon with the MS). The fact that this genius manifested itself primarily in the field of painting is due to the fact that in Taurus Salvador Dali had a powerful stellium (Sun, Venus, Mercury, Mars) in a tense aspect square with Saturn. Uncertainty in life and strong fears, as well as a large number of The sexual complexes of Salvador Dali are caused in many respects by the square of Saturn to its Sun, Mercury and Mars. Of course, I am not an expert in painting, but the strong influence of Saturn in his works is very noticeable and clearly highlighted in his painting technique as clarity and accuracy in drawing details and lines.
"From fragments of documents and memories of childhood, Dali appears as a very suggestible, dreamy, timid and hopelessly impractical child, inexplicably confusing fantasy and reality. Salvador Dali, in principle, remained like that all his life. Dali's relationship with his own sexuality was not easy all his life. A young man suffered from a full range of sexual complexes - from anxiety about the size of his penis to fear of having a relationship with a woman (an illustrated book on venereal diseases, which his father left open on the piano for educational purposes, played an important role here) and fears that he was impotent and a latent homosexual. In his youth, Dali was dazzlingly handsome: taller than average, blue-eyed, stylishly dressed. He liked to make an impact on the public, and he grew his hair and sideburns, and casually wore a raincoat over his shoulder. Girls liked Dali, but because of his hypersensitivity and timidity remained a virgin until the age of 25, i.e. before meeting with Gala Salvador's talent for painting manifested itself in early childhood. By the end of school, he had already successfully exhibited his paintings several times in Figueres and Barcelona. The father, proud of his achievements, decided that his son would study in Madrid. In September 1922, Salvador settled in the Madrid Residence of Students, Spain's foremost "student town". In the first weeks, he had little contact with the other inhabitants of the Residence due to terrible shyness. But soon he made friends. Among them is the future director Luis Bunuel from Aragon, who tried to study alternately at several faculties, an amateur athlete and a born rebel. Together they explored the nooks and crannies of Madrid at night and visited intellectual companies in numerous cafes. From the first days of his stay at the Dali Residence, he heard stories about its brightest resident, who at that time was at home in Andalusia. Federico Garcia Lorca, 6 years older than Dali, was born in a village near Granada. By the time they met, he had already published his first book. Lorca played the piano beautifully, sang, was an excellent storyteller, drew ... At first sight, he could charm the interlocutor. However, the poet was shunned by those who knew about his "flaw": Lorca was a homosexual - a fact that even now his few surviving friends refuse to accept.
At the beginning of 1923, Lorca arrived at the Residence. They had much in common with Dali: a love of poetry and France (both were Germanophobes), of Spanish folk songs that they had been sung to since childhood; concern about the injustice of the world; problems with their own sexuality. It was a "great friendship", as Dali wrote, which gradually grew into something more. Dali resisted as best he could the idea that he was like Lorca in his sexual addictions, and feared that he might succumb to his secret desires. Since the beginning of the 20s, the image of Lorca has appeared in all Dali's paintings, displacing his first "nature" - his sister. Their heads touch as if in a kiss...
In May 1926, after the publication of "Ode to Salvador Dali", which shocked the artist, Lorca tried to seduce him. However, Dali was adamant. "I was very excited. And somewhere in the depths of his soul he told himself that he great poet and that I must give him some of the divine Dali.” But this did not happen. Later, Lorca once again tried to make Dali his lover. And then he wrote: “I behaved like an indecent donkey, with you - the best that I have. Every minute I understand this more and more clearly and I regret everything very much. Buñuel was dismayed by the growing intimacy of Lorca and Dalí's relationship. He wrote to his friend Pepin Bello: “Dishonest Garcia! We must free El Salvador from his influence. Because Dali is a real man and very talented.” External intervention was not required, circumstances separated the two geniuses. However, they continued to correspond and met whenever possible. Until his death, Lorca remained for Dali the main person of his life - after Gala. "
(from the book by J. Gibson "The life of Salvador Dali, full of shame")
The basis of the horoscope of Gala (Elena Dyakonova) is the T-square of the Sun and Mercury in Virgo, the Moon in Sagittarius and Neptune, Pluto in Gemini. The time of Gala's birth is unknown, but already on the basis of this T-square alone, it can be argued that she should have been a very practical, mercantile and domineering woman, but at the same time, not without abilities and strong flair in art (strong influence of Neptune through intense aspectation with the luminaries and Mercury). In fact, all her life, Gala was engaged in finding talent or genius in art, becoming his wife and muse and making him famous and rich (at the same time living comfortably herself). So it was with her first husband, the French poet Paul Eluard, so it was with the semi-mad artist Salvador Dali, whom she inspired and masterfully made the world famous star of surrealism. In fact, the character of Gala was in many ways an alloy of maiden prudence and practicality and Neptunian sacrifice, sensitivity and the desire to live with lofty illusions. In addition, from my point of view, in the character of Gala, the influence of Uranus (in this version of the horoscope through the conjunction with the Ascendant) and Pluto (Scorpio) through the rigid aspect of Pluto with the Sun, Moon and Mercury and the position of the Ascendant in Scorpio (in this version horoscope). Gala was clearly a very freedom-loving and non-standard woman with strong sexual needs. I looked at the horoscope with a birth time of 11 o'clock, because. this version of the horoscope seems to me to fully describe the personality and character of Gala (Ascendant in Scorpio in conjunction with Uranus, Sun-Mercury conjunction in Virgo in the 10th house, Moon in the 2nd house, horoscope ruler Pluto and Neptune in the 8th house) . In addition, this time is close to noon (for which cosmograms are usually considered at an unknown time of birth).
"Gala was the wife of Paul Eluard, a French poet. Dali and Gala saw each other - and after the first meeting they did not part for 53 years: they were separated by Gala's death in 1982.
Gala means "holiday" in French. She really became a holiday of inspiration for Salvador Dali. The main model for the painter.
The life of Elena Ivanovna Dyakonova, who went down in world art history as a Gala, is an exciting novel.
Elena Dyakonova was born in Kazan in 1894, therefore, she was older than Salvador Dali not by 12, as some claimed, but by exactly 10 years. His father died early, he was a modest official. Mother remarried a lawyer, and when Elena was 17 years old, the family moved to Moscow.
In her youth, Gala was a sickly teenager, and in 1912 she was sent to Switzerland to be treated for tuberculosis. In the Clavadel sanatorium, the Russian girl met the young French poet Eugene-Emile-Paul Grandel. His father, a wealthy real estate dealer, sent his son to a sanatorium to be cured... of poetry. Grandel (later he took a different name - Eluard) did not recover from poetry, but Gala got rid of tuberculosis, but both were overcome by another ailment, much more dangerous - they fell in love with each other. It was then that she would call herself Gala - with an emphasis on the last syllable. Perhaps from the French word for "cheerful, lively"?
It was a real passionate romance that ended in marriage. But first, the lovers had to part, Eluard went to France, Gala to Russia, but they continued their love in the epistolary genre, through an exchange of letters. “My dear lover, my darling, my dear boy!” Gala wrote to Eluard. “I miss you as something indispensable.” She addressed him as a "boy", and sometimes even as a child - this Freudian appeal indicated that Elena had a strong maternal beginning, and she always loved men younger than herself, she wanted to be not only a lover, but also a mother . To patronize, instruct, groom ...
Paul Eluard had a great influence on the Gala. He turned a modest Russian admirer of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky into a real woman, almost a fatal “vamp” (she had all the makings for this), and she, in turn, becoming his muse, constantly inspired him to create more and more new poems.
And yet the romantic role of the poet's wife is not in the spirit of Gala. She openly admitted: “I will never be just a housewife. I will read a lot, a lot. I will do whatever I want, but at the same time maintain the attractiveness of a woman who does not overwork herself. have well-groomed hands with manicured nails."
A year after the marriage, a daughter, Cecile, was born. Gala and Paul adored their daughter, but still a normal family did not work out. Paul Eluard could not sit still, separations and trips for her husband did not contribute to domestic happiness. There was mutual dissatisfaction with each other. Stormy quarrels were replaced by no less violent declarations of love. “We have grown into each other,” Elena thought so. But the ingrowth still turned out to be not so strong. At the same time, we must not forget that Paul Eluard was a poet, and, therefore, looked at the world with different eyes than ordinary people. Let's just say : he looked with crazy eyes at a crazy world. And accordingly, he built relationships with his wife like that. He loved, for example, to show photographs of naked Elena to his friends, and she gradually entered the role of the poet’s muse, not as pure as the sinful one. It is no coincidence, on the initiative Helena, a love triangle soon formed: Helena - Paul Eluard - artist Max Ernst.
The future Gala quickly learned what the freedom of love means, and immediately took advantage of its fruits. So before meeting with Salvador Dali, Gala was already quite a woman who knew what she needed.
Gala was not a beauty, but she had great charm, female magnetism, vibes emanated from her that bewitched men. It is no coincidence that the French publisher, art collector Pierre Argille, answering journalists' questions, said: "This woman had an extraordinary attraction. Her first husband Eluard wrote her tender love letters until his death. And only after he died in 1942, Dali and Gala officially got married. Salvador painted her endlessly. To be honest, she was not so young for a model, but artists, you know, are not easy people. Since she inspired him..." "
In August 1929, Paul Eluard with his wife Elena (she is 35 years old) and daughter Cecile (she is 11 years old) went from Paris by car to Spain, to the fishing village of Cadaques, to visit the young Spanish artist Salvador Dali (he is 25 years old). The poet met Dali in the Parisian nightclub "Bal Gabarin" and received an invitation to relax in the outback, away from the noise.On the way to Spain, Eluard enthusiastically told his wife about Dali's unusual work and about his shocking film "Andalusian Dog".
“He never ceased to admire his dear Salvador, as if on purpose he pushed me into his arms, although I didn’t even see him,” Gala later recalled. The artist's house was located outside the village, on the shore of a crescent-shaped bay. It was painted white, with eucalyptus and flaming geraniums growing in front of it, standing out brightly against the black gravel. Gala was not a beauty, but she had great charm, female magnetism, vibes emanated from her that bewitched men. It is no coincidence that the French publisher, art collector Pierre Argille, answering journalists' questions, said: "This woman had an extraordinary attraction. Her first husband Eluard wrote her tender love letters until his death. And only after he died in 1942, Dali and Gala officially got married. Salvador painted her endlessly. To be honest, she was not so young for a model, but artists, you know, are not easy people. Since she inspired him ... "
In his book The Secret Life, Dali writes:
“She admitted that she took me for a nasty and unbearable type because of my varnished hair, which gave me the appearance of a professional Argentine tango dancer ... In my room I always went naked, but if I had to go to the village, for an hour I dressed myself in immaculate white trousers, fantastic sandals, silk shirts, a necklace of fake pearls and a bracelet on my wrist."
“She began to consider me as a genius,” Dali further admitted. “Half-mad, but with great spiritual power. And she was waiting for something - the embodiment of her own myths. She thought that I might be able to become this incarnation.”
Gal's version: "I immediately realized that he was a genius." Eluard was talented, and Dali was a genius, and Elena Dyakonova-Eluard immediately identified this. She had an innate artistic flair.
And what happened next? And then Gala allegedly told Salvador Dali a "historical phrase": "My little boy, we will never leave each other." She firmly decided to connect her life with the artist Dali and leave the poet Eluard. In fact, she left not only her husband, but also her daughter. What turned out to be more in this decision? Adventurism or deep calculation? It's hard to answer. What was Paul Eluard to do? He packed his bags and left the refuge of Salvador Dali, having received a kind of compensation for the loss of his wife in the form of his own portrait (Portrait of Paul Eluard). Dali explained the idea of its creation in this way: "I felt that I had the duty to capture the face of the poet, from whose Olympus I stole one of the muses."
At first, Gala and Salvador lived together unofficially, and only after the death of Eluard did they officially get married. They got married on August 8, 1958, 29 years after they first met. The ceremony was private, almost secret. It was, of course, a strange marriage in all worldly senses, but not in a creative one. Sensual Gala, who even at the time of Dali did not want to remain a faithful wife, and a virgin artist who was terribly afraid of intimacy with a woman. How did they get along with each other? Obviously, Dali turned his sexual energy into creative energy, and Gala realized her sensuality on the side. As the Spanish journalist Antonio D. Olano testifies: "She really was insatiable. Gala tirelessly pursued the young men who posed for Dali, and often got her way. Dali was also insatiable, but only in his imagination."
In everyday life, they turned out to be an almost perfect couple, as often happens with completely different people. Salvador Dali is an absolutely impractical, timid, notorious person who was afraid of everything - from riding elevators to concluding contracts. Regarding the latter, Gala once said: "In the morning, El Salvador makes mistakes, and in the afternoon I correct them, tearing up the agreements he signed lightly."
This surrealistic Madonna in everyday affairs was a cold and rather rational woman, so with Dali they represented two different spheres: ice and fire.
“Gala pierced me like a sword directed by Providence itself,” wrote Salvador Dali. “It was a ray of Jupiter, as a sign from above, indicating that we should never part.” Before meeting with Gala, the artist was only on the threshold of his own glory. This woman helped him step over the threshold and enjoy the sparkling halls of worldwide popularity. Gal's appearance coincided with a break with the Surrealist group. In fact, it was the Gala that took Salvador Dali away from the aesthetic control of Breton and his entire company. But it didn't happen right away. “Soon you will be the way I want to see you,” she announced to him, and the artist believed her. “I blindly believed everything that she predicted to me.”
But Gala not only predicted, she selflessly and selflessly helped him, looked for rich sponsors, organized exhibitions, and sold his paintings. “We never gave up before failures,” Dali noted. “We got out thanks to the strategic dexterity of Gala. We didn’t go anywhere. Gala sewed dresses for herself, and I worked a hundred times more than any mediocre artist.”
In 1934, the Dali couple went to the USA - it was an exceptionally correct move, dictated by Gal's amazing intuition, she definitely felt that it was the Americans who would like and afford Dali's talent. And she was not mistaken: in the USA, Salvador Dali was waiting for a sensational success - the country was seized by a "surreal fever". In honor of Dali, surrealistic balls with masquerades were held, at which guests appeared in costumes, as if inspired by the artist’s fantasy, extravagant, provocative and funny. The couple returned home rich and very famous: America transferred Dali's talent to the highest level - to genius. A second trip to the US in 1939 further strengthened the initial success.
Two circumstances contributed to the rapid growth of Dali's popularity across the ocean - an unsurpassed ability to arrange public scandals and a partial revision of artistic principles, which made the works of the Spanish surrealist more accessible to the general public.
In America, spouses live all the war and the first post-war years. With the help of Dali, of course, Gala arranges exhibitions, gives lectures, paints portraits of wealthy Americans, illustrates books, writes scripts, librettos and costumes for ballet and opera productions, decorates the windows of luxury stores on Fifth Avenue in New York and the pavilions of international fairs, collaborates with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney, tries his hand at photography and arranges surrealistic balls. In short, gushing with might and main! ..
In the late 1940s, the couple returned to Europe in triumph. Fame, money - everything is in abundance. Everything is fine, except for one thing: Gala is getting old. However, she does not give up and is still a model for numerous Dali paintings.
Salvador Dali, who lost his mother early and did not receive her love, subconsciously searched for his mother and found her ideal expression in Gala, but she, in turn, found a son in him (she loved her daughter Cecile less, and it was no coincidence that she was raised by Paul's grandmother Eluard).
Sister Gala Lydia, who once visited the spouses, noted that she had never seen a more tender and touching attitude of a woman to a man in her life: “Gala fiddles with Dali like a child, reads to him at night, makes him drink some necessary pills, sorts out with him his nightmares and with infinite patience dispels his suspiciousness. Dali threw hours at another visitor - Gala rushes to him with soothing drops - God forbid, he will have a seizure. " Could the "woman - the embodiment of evil", the "greedy Valkyrie", as the journalists called her, hold on like that?
The intimate life of the spouses forever remained a secret. In it, in all likelihood, there was no such thing as fidelity. For Gala, it was a free marriage, and she was free to choose her lovers. “Not free, my dear, not free!” But this refers to her young and mature years. Later, she had to pay herself.
When in 1964 Galya turned seventy years old. She dyed her hair, sometimes already put on a wig and thought about plastic surgery. But the older she got, the more she wanted love. She tried to seduce anyone who got in her way. “El Salvador doesn’t care, each of us has our own life,” she convinced her husband’s friends, dragging them into bed.
And yet Gala remains a mystery. In numerous interviews that she gave over half a century, she stubbornly did not talk about her relationship with Dali. All her letters to Eluard were destroyed by her ex-husband, asking her to do the same with her own in order to "deprive curious descendants of looking into their intimate life." True, Gala, according to the artist, left an autobiography on which she worked for 4 years. Gala kept a diary in Russian. Where these priceless documents are now is unknown. Perhaps the art world is waiting for new finds and new discoveries.
The medieval castle of Pubol (near Porta Lligata) became a manifestation of Dali's passionate love. Gala received such a gift at the age of 74, when their marital relationship became more complicated. Dali increasingly rested in the company of fashion model Amanda Lear. However, he tried not to move away from Gala, who wanted peace and monastic peace. Dali was able to visit her only with her written permission.
The last years of Gala were poisoned by illnesses and rapidly impending senile infirmity. "The day of death," she said, "will be the happiest day of my life." It came on June 10, 1982. Gala lived for 88 years. Stormy and unique.
Salvador Dali survived the Gala for 7 years, although it was difficult to call it life. It was already the semi-mad agony of genius."
(information from the Mir Dali website)
This synastry, from my point of view, is primarily based on three powerful synastric elements. This is the connection of the North Lunar Node of the Gala horoscope with the ruler of the horoscope, the Moon and MS of Salvador Dali, the exact connection of Mars Gala with Venus of Salvador Dali and the exact connection of Jupiter Gala with Neptune of Salvador Dali (Jupiter Gala was energetically connected with all elements of the T-square of Salvador Dali: the Moon, Neptune, Uranus). Perhaps in the synastry there are also powerful relationships that are tied to the rulers of the Ascendant and the Descendant and the axes of the ASC-DSC themselves, but since. the time of Gal's birth is unknown, then we will analyze only those elements that are in the synastry at any time of Gal's birth.
The exact connection of the North Lunar Node of the Gala horoscope with the ruler of the horoscope, the Moon and the MS of Salvador Dali, is a very powerful karmic synastric aspect. Such a connection in the synastry clearly had to hold the couple together very tightly and is a very strong indication that the goal of Gala in this incarnation should have been precisely that she actually made an undeniably brilliant artist and an extraordinary personality a world famous surrealist star and multimillionaire. From a Parisian who found pleasure in the entertainment of the bohemia, Gala turned into a nanny, secretary, manager of a genius artist, and then into the mistress of a huge empire, whose name is Dali. She kept Dali under constant financial and creative pressure. And it was precisely this treatment that was needed for a weak-willed and poorly organized person, such as Salvador Dali was. Of course, this did not go unnoticed, and the press often represented Gala as the embodiment of evil, reproached her for being cruel, greedy and immoral. Journalist Frank Whitford in The Sunday Times simply called Dali's muse a predator. He wrote in a newspaper in the summer of 1994: "The Gala-Dali couple was to some extent reminiscent of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Helpless in everyday life, an extremely sensual artist was captivated by a tough, prudent and desperately upward predator, which the surrealists dubbed the Gala Plague She simply took the defenseless and undoubtedly gifted Dali and turned him into a multimillionaire and a "star" of world magnitude.Even before the marriage in 1934, Gala managed to ensure that crowds of wealthy collectors began to besiege their house, passionately desiring to acquire relics consecrated by a genius Dali."
For love and sexual relationships, the Venus-Mars aspect is one of the most powerful and classic planetary interactions in a synastric chart. both planets are classical sex planets. With exact aspects between Venus and Mars partners (it is better if Mars is feminine and Venus is masculine), a strong sexual attraction arises between people (with tense aspects, it is difficult to control passion), which most often determines their relationship in the first few years. In this synastry, this aspect of Mars-Venus is double. Mars Gala is in exact conjunction (up to a few minutes) with Salvador Dali's Venus, and Dali's Mars is in fairly exact square with Venus Gala (orb less than 2 degrees). Thus, both partners ideally met the requirements for choosing a partner of their sexual planets (Venus for a man and Mars for a woman). It was these aspects of the strongest sexual attraction that were the basis for the fact that the rapprochement between Dali and Gala happened very quickly and irresistibly, and Gala actually became the only woman who existed for Dali on the physical sexual plane and who was able to neutralize many numerous sexual complexes and fears of close sexual contact. with women who, from youth, were with Salvador Dali (associated either with the tense aspect of Saturn to the Sun, Mercury and Mars, or with the tense aspects of Uranus and Neptune to the ruler of the horoscope, the Moon, or maybe with both at once).
From the moment when Dali first saw Gala, he lost his peace - he fell in love to the point of madness. “Her body was as tender as that of a child,” he would write many years later in his book The Secret Life. - The line of the shoulders was almost perfectly rounded, and the muscles of the waist, outwardly fragile, were athletically tense, like those of a teenager. But the curve of the lower back was truly feminine. The graceful combination of a slender energetic cable, wasp waist and tender hips made her even more desirable. From the time of the first youthful love, before meeting with Gala, not a single girl attracted Dali's attention. He seemed to have gone crazy when he met Gala. Luis Bunuel said the following about this: "Dali changed overnight."
Another powerful element of the synastry, which undoubtedly largely determined the relationship in this pair, is that Jupiter Gala was in very exact aspects with the planets of the T-square of Salvador Dali, the Moon, Neptune, Uranus. In fact, it was these aspects of Jupiter Gala with elements of the T-square of Dali's horoscope that caused Gala to feel the genius of Salvador Dali, who at that time was only a novice artist, and the reason that for Salvador Dali Gala became exactly the real a muse that inspired him to creativity and constant work. After all, it was the T-square of the Moon-Neptune-Uranus that was the creative base for the artist, which made him a brilliant half-crazy artist with unbridled imagination and one of the leaders of surrealism, and Jupiter Gala filled this already tense configuration with additional powerful energy. Yes, and in ordinary everyday life, this synastric element made the relationship in this pair exceptionally tender and subtle. In addition, Salvador Dali's Jupiter was in trine with the Moon Gala and sextile with her Neptune and Pluto, i.e. unloaded the tension of the T-square in the Gala horoscope as part of the Sun-Mercury-Pluto-Neptune-Moon and was also an element of the synastry, which increased the tenderness for each other and the ardent love of partners in these relationships. It was these synastric aspects of Jupiter that made the relationship in this pair passionate, sincere and filled with very strong idealism. Gala was a real muse for Salvador Dali, whom he literally idolized and whose face he reproduced in many of his paintings.
Sister Gala Lydia, who once visited the spouses, noted that she had never seen a more tender and touching attitude of a woman to a man in her life: “Gala fiddles with Dali like a child, reads to him at night, makes him drink some necessary pills, sorts out with him his nightmares and with infinite patience dispels his suspiciousness. Dali threw hours at another visitor - Gala rushes to him with soothing drops - God forbid, he will have a seizure. "
Salvador Dali constantly painted Gala in the form of a mythical woman and even with the face of Christ. In the famous painting "The Last Supper" you can recognize the features of Gala. And all because the artist did not get tired of idolizing his muse. Gala, Gradiva, Galatea, my talisman, my treasure, my gold - this is only a small part of the names that the painter gave to his muse and wife. High-sounding titles and sophisticatedly sensual nicknames were, as it were, part of the "surreality" in which the spouses lived. In one of the artist's paintings, Christopher Columbus, having stepped onto the shores of the New World, carries a banner with the image of Gal and the inscription: "I love Gal more than my mother, more than my father, more than Picasso and even more money." Salvador Dali, who lost his mother early and did not receive her love, subconsciously searched for his mother and found her ideal expression in Gala, but she, in turn, found her son in him.
Of the remaining elements of the synastry, it can be distinguished that both suns of partners are in the earth element, and the moons are in the fiery element, which indicates their high compatibility at the level of temperaments, ego and emotional level. Also noteworthy is the presence of the exact aspect of the quadrature from Saturn Gala to the Ascendant and Descendant of Salvador Dali (perhaps from here comes her complete control over Dali), as well as aspects from Saturn Dali to Venus (opposition), Saturn (trine) and the Moon (sextile) Gala . Such a large number of aspects of Saturns in the synastry is a serious additional indication of strong karmicity in these relationships (in addition to the connection of the North Lunar Node Gala with the Moon and Salvador Dali's MC).
If in the Gala horoscope the Ascendant, as I assume, is indeed in Scorpio with Uranus in the Ascendant (Uranus in the 1st house or a few degrees from the Ascendant in the 12th), then the Sun (and possibly Venus) of Salvador Dali falls in the 7th th house of the horoscope Gala. In addition, an additional strong connection between the two horoscopes arises from the aspect between the rulers of the partners' descendents (opposition between Venus Gala and Saturn Dali).
Without Gala, there would not have been that Salvador Dali, the world-famous genius of surrealism, whom everyone knew, and without Dali, no one would even have heard anything about Gala. Both of them fully realized in these partnerships, and, in fact, met in this life precisely for this - he became a great, famous and universally recognized genius of painting and surrealism, and she became the wife of a rich and famous husband, bathed in the rays of his world glory.
