Dali Galatea of the Spheres 60 x 80 cm art print

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The idea is that while Dalí was the face of the enterprise, Gala propelled it. Dalí certainly recognised her contribution, signing some of his paintings “Gala Salvador Dalí” (which gave the exhibition its title). Can Gala, having produced no art that we know of, really be considered an artist? Perhaps not. But this exhibition does show how much Salvador Dalí – and his art – depended on her forceful personality, for better or worse. Mankind is composed from the elements of the earth and these elements are recycled when each person dies. "For dust you are and to dust you will return". As with earlier Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Swans Reflecting Elephants uses the reflection in a lake to create the double image seen in the painting. In Metamorphosis, the reflection of Galatea de las Esferas es una pintura realizada por Salvador Dalí en 1952. Representa a Gala Dalí, esposa y musa de Salvador, formándose con una serie de esferas. El nombre de Galatea se refiere a la ninfa del mar de la mitología clásica conocida por su virtud, aunque también podría referirse a la estatua amada por su creador, Pigmalión. (es)

An exhibition at the National Art Museum of Catalonia, in Barcelona, tries to piece together Gala’s side of the story, recasting her as not simply a muse, but a writer, conceptual artist and performer ahead of her time. It displays a selection of Dalí’s paintings, photographs of them together, and some of Gala’s letters to family, friends and lovers, as well as a diary that was recently unearthed from her castle in Púbol. The diary is self-consciously literary, and a letter to the artist René Crevel reveals that Gala claimed to be working on a novel – though no manuscript has been found. critical association of delirious phenomena." Dali used this method to bring forth the hallucinatory forms, double images and visual illusions that filled his paintings during the Thirties. Gala became Dalì’s frequent model. Over 50 years, Dalí made myriad drawings and paintings of Gala. He depicted her variously as a madonna, an erotic figure, or a mysterious woman.Dali made Soft Construction with Boiled Beans to represent the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. Dali painted this 6 months before the Spanish Civil War had even begun and then claimed that he had known the war was going Dali made this piece in 1952, depicting his partner at the time Gala, however the two did not marry until 1958. This is a traditional painting in the fact that it is a portrait image of Gala despite that though it is definitely unconventional in the way that the face is formed as a result of these shapes coming together. This was made during Dali’s nuclear mysticism period where he was focused on the maths / science side of reality as well as the creative side. These two passions of his coincided to form this and a few other pieces from this period in his life. Dali developed an interest for the atomic bomb – the first one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. This involved the splitting of atoms, releasing enough energy to cause a major catastrophe that is still devastating today. The spherical shapes in Dali’s painting resemble the atom splitting into the different particles. However the first hydrogen bomb was also tested in 1952, instead of the atom splitting, particles fused to become helium nuclei, again releasing copious amounts of energy. As we know that Dali had an interest in nuclear physics since the atomic bomb, it is possible that he created this piece to show the particles coming together to form Gala which would represent the massive impact she had on his life much like a bomb. In the Surrealist period, I wanted to create the iconography of the interior world and the world of the marvelous, of my father Freud. Today, the exterior world and that of physics has transcended the one of psychology. My father today is Dr. Heisenberg.”

In the painting I appreciate the idea of replication and infinity. How many atoms exist in the Universe? What actually is the smallest material particle that exists? Dali was fascinated by nuclear physics and when the atom bomb was first dropped he felt it had to be incorporated into art. Dali was probably amongst the first group of artists to depict the nuclear age with his image "Idillio Atomico" in 1945. He described the atom as his favourite food for thought. Alternatively cast as the Virgin Mary, a " Venus of Urbino"-esque reclining figure and a dark, enigmatic woman, Gala appeared in hundreds of her husband’s drawings and paintings. Soon, Salvador even started signing works with their joint signature, “Gala Salvador Dalí,” in honor of his belief that it was “mostly with your blood, Gala, that I paint my pictures.”

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Dalí produced several paintings during this time but he also caused outrage locally by designing the sexually suggestive costumes for a Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo production of Bacchanale at a local Mosque, and through his design (thankfully never realized) for a statute of Captain Sally Louisa Tompkins, a Civil War nurse and the only female officer commissioned in the Confederate Army, who would be shown "slaying a dragon on a base supported by a 20-foot replica of Dalí's index finger [...] rendered in pink aluminum supplied by [the local] Reynolds Metals, the corporate logo of which was an image of St. George slaying a dragon". But as Nin recounted in her famous diary, it was not the artist so much as Gala that caused most discontent at the Manor. She wrote: It was during this period that Gala and Dalí first made the acquaintance of the fashion designer Christian Dior. Gala was becoming instrumental in raising her husband's profile in Paris and between 1931 and 1933 she helped her husband exhibit in Pierre Colle's small gallery which was part owned by Dior. By now Gala had devoted herself completely to Dalí and his career. She divorced Éluard in 1932 and become Mrs. Gala Dalí in a civil ceremony in 1934. She also abandoned her daughter completely, leaving her in the sole care of Éluard. The newlyweds became co-dependents and she even allowed herself to be dressed by her husband. Gala also participated in his Surrealist performances including their "rebirth as a couple" from a giant egg. Not everyone was happy about this relationship, however. Dalí's father and sister disowned him and while he was reconciled with his father in later years, his sister never accepted their relationship. Galatea of the Spheres is a painting by Salvador Dalí made in 1952. It depicts Gala Dalí, Salvador Dalí's wife and muse, as pieced together through a series of spheres arranged in a continuous array. The name Galatea refers to a sea nymph of Classical mythology renowned for her virtue, and may also refer to the statue beloved by its creator, Pygmalion. (en)

In this painting, Dalí depicts Gala as a bust portrait broken down into round spheres of color. Surrealist in style, when the spheres are viewed as a whole, the image of his wife becomes clear. Gala seems to float unanchored in a blue sky above a body of water. Dalí's fragmenting of this image, marks an interesting development in his work and displays his growing fascination with nuclear physics and the idea (a revelation to Dalí) that matter was made up of atoms. Dalí investigated these ideas, though never at the expense of his religious beliefs, in several paintings. He referred to works produced during this time as his "nuclear mysticism" period . In 1982, Gala died. Although Dalì despised her by then, he was so dependent on her that he couldn’t function without her. He chose to remain at Púbol. He sobbed constantly, made animal noises, suffered hallucinations, and at one point, claimed he was a snail.One of the most representative works from the nuclear mysticism period. It is the outcome of a Dalí impassioned by science and for the theories of the disintegration of the atom. Gala’s face is made up from a discontinuous, fragmented setting, densely populated by spheres, which on the axis of the canvas takes on a prodigious three-dimensional vision and perspective. As Dalí clarified in his Anti-Matter Manifesto: “Today, the exterior world —the physical one— has gone beyond the psychological one. My father, today, is Doctor Heisenberg”. It is one of the most eloquent acts of homage to Gala’s face that Dalí produced, and he wanted it to be seen in the Palace of Winds in his Theatre-Museum, on an easel that had belonged to Meissonier, a painter of whom there are two works in the museum that formed part of Dalí’s private collection. There’s no evidence that Gala actually shared her husband’s paint brush (although she did contribute to his 1942 autobiography and other written works), but as the museum notes, she was very much the joint author of Salvador’s oeuvre: “It was she who chose the image with which she wanted to present and, especially, represent herself. It is possible to design one’s own self-portrait without producing a tangible pictorial work.” Gala also grew tired of living with her husband's eccentricities who, to appease her, bought Gala a castle in Púbol, Spain. It was a space that was Gala's alone; even her husband was not allowed to visit unless he was formally invited. Citing the co-ordinator of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Jordi Artigas i Cadena, Minder describes how Gala wanted the castle to be "a place of silence and nostalgia, designed for a lady looking for her lost Russian youth" and that Dalí "decorated the interior specifically for his wife, encrusting some ceilings with a 'G' coat of arms in her honor". Dalí himself wrote in his Unspeakable Confessions in 1973: "I gave her a mansion [...] where she would reign like an absolute sovereign, right up to the point that I could visit her only by hand-written invitation from her. I limited myself to the pleasure of decorating her ceilings so that when she raised her eyes, she would always find me in her sky".