Salvador Dali (1904-1989)
Salvador Dalí was born on May 11, 1904, in a village of Figueras (a town in Northern Spain close to the Pyrienes). He was born 3 years after his brother, who died of meningitis when he was 6 years old.
In 1973 he would write: "As soon as I was born, I started walking in the footsteps of a worshiped dead. They still loved him when they loved me. Maybe more than me... These limits of my father's love have been a great wound for me from the first days of my life."
The name they gave him; It was the same name as his dead brother: Salvador. The painter looked like a twin to this brother. It was a living mirror of Velazquez's painting of his brother, which hung in his parents' bedroom along with Jesus on the Cross. Thus, Salvador Dalí became a petty despot. His fits of hysteria and theatrical movements for the attention of his family were commonplace. For a long time, even the birth of his sister, Ana Maria, who conquered him, was not enough to correct him. On the contrary, as time passed, the desire to express one's difference became more and more unbearable.
Sick child; It was the title of his first self-portrait, which he did at the age of 10. After a while, he started his first painting course. His teacher, Juan Núñez, was a good painter; He learned to draw from him. Later, Catalan (the name given to people who speak a different language called Catalan living in the North-East of Spain) came to know the impressionists and realists.
He later discovered Cubism and Juan Gris. He started the Madrid San Fernando Academy in the early 20s. However, he was expelled from school for his anarchist movements and was imprisoned in Girona for a while. (1923) He was expelled completely in 1926, although he was later re-admitted to the school. The following year he met Picasso in Paris. 10 years later in London Stefan Zweig introduced him to Sigmund Freud.
He met Luis Buñuel and García Lorca in Madrid in 1923. So Dalí changed. Also with its appearance. His long hair at the beginning; His pipe, which never fell out of his mouth, later turned into a sullen man in a sports suit with short brindle hair. daily life; revolved around an intellectual discourse and a luxurious life. He helped stage the movie "An Andalusian Dog" with Buñuel. But. He avoided a second film, accusing Buñuel of impiety. However, he became very close friends with García Lorca. Between 1925-36 they had a harmonious friendship. The women weren't very interested. They were "necessary only for their erotic fantasies".
The event that changed Dali's mind took place in 1926 when he met Gala. Premiere; she was the daughter of a Russian lawyer and the wife of the surrealist poet Paul Eduard. He was with his wife when he first saw her on the opposite terrace of the Hotel Miramar on the Catalan coast of the Mediterranean Sea in Cadaquez. They agreed to meet at the beach at 11 am the next day.
Dali decided to prepare this event in a purely symbolic form. Undressed. She cut and folded her clothes to show her nipples, hair, belly button, and browning skin. She wore a pearl necklace around her neck and a red geranium in her ear. Inspired by her shaving injury, she smeared her own blood. She mixed it with fishtail, goat dung, and oil. But seeing Gala through the window, especially her bare tanned back, she decided to put an end to this deadly ritual and strip her of her limpness and this plague of passion.
After a few months, they would start living together completely in love. And from that moment on Gala; For Dali, she will be a lover, a friend, a muse and a model (his first appearance in profile on Gran Mastrubador), an adviser and, above all, the manager of his existence. They built their life's home in Port Lligat. They traveled all over the world, first to escape the Spanish Civil War and then World War II.
Dali explains his thought as follows: "I have always been an anarchist and at the same time a monarchist. I have always been against the bourgeoisie and still am. The real cultural revolution is possible through the restoration of monarchist principles." But in 1934, after five years of active cooperation, he was separated from his old surrealist friends and accused of turning into a petty bourgeois. Because he avoided politics: "Marxism did not interest me in the least. Politics was like a cancer." He settled in New York, but returned occasionally.
For example, after the fascists killed his friend Garcia Lorca or after the Nazi invasion. However, he was sought after, loved, and well paid by North Americans. They dedicated a 1966 retrospective to him at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 1966. She had to wait until 1979 for another exhibition in Beuborg.
Gala died 3 years later in 1982. She almost stopped painting after that time. Dali settled in Pubol, where Gala's tomb is located, and gave his last works. Recognizing all currents; passing through all possible influences; After creating that gigantic work "The Tower of Babel" with all his madness; Salvador Dali noticed a thread running through his art. This thread was invisibly connecting his first surrealist work, which he produced before he was even with Breton, to his truly surrealist work. Dali's eyes, which Freud described as sincere and fanatical; he was always exploring a fascinating world.
Dali never parted with his adored muse Gala, he was attached to her for a home more than his need for himself. After surviving the fire in Pubol Castle; He died on February 23, 1989 at the Figueras hospital, at the age of 84. His body was medicated; and was buried under the giant dome that dominated his museum in Figueras.
