Gala Dalí

Gala Eluard Dalí, usually known simply as Gala (26 August, 1894 - 10 June, 1982) was inspiration for many artists.

"Galarina"; 1944 portrait of Gala by Salvador Dalí

Among her childhood friends was the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. She was born Helena Dmitrievna Deluvina Diakonova in Kazan, Russia, to a family of intellectuals. In 1913 she was sent to a sanatorium in Clavadel in Switzerland to treat her tuberculosis. She met with Paul Eluard while in Switzerland and married him a few years later. She moved to Paris with him and they had a daughter named Cécile.

Gala became involved in the Surrealist movement with Eluard.

Gala was inspiration for many artists including Eluard, Louis Aragon, Max Ernst and Andre Breton. Breton, the "ideologue of surrealisme" later despised her.

Paul and Gala visited a young surrealist painter in Catalonia together with their friends in 1929. The painter was Salvador Dalí. An affair quickly developed between Dalí and Gala. Dali was 11 years younger than Gala. They married in 1932. She underwent a hysterectomy at around this time.

She was a real muse for Dalí, who said that she was the one who saved him from madness and an early death. Indeed, behind his artistic genius Dali was a troubled, insecure and disorganised man and it was Gala who acted as his agent, the interface between the genius and the real world. In doing so she had hurt many sensitivities who accused her of being materialistic.

Gala had numerous affairs, which Dalí did not object to. She had a fondness for young artists, and in her old age often gave those who associated with her expensive gifts.

She earned for herself the position amongst the pantheon of the greatest objects of love the world has ever seen in the hands of Dalí. Gala is a frequent model in Dalí's work, often in religious roles such as the Blessed Virgin Mary as in the painting The Madonna of Port Lligat. Dalí's numerous paintings of her show his great love for her, and some are perhaps some of the most affectionate and sensual depictions of a middle-aged woman in Western art.

Gala died in 1982 and was buried in the Castle of Púbol in Catalonia which Dalí had bought for her.