Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali

precise and detailed painful reality and, placed them inside somber and depressing

landscapes as in 'The persistence of Memory' in 1931 (Smith, 2002, 1/1).

His paintings showed a surrealist maturity since he was twenty. From 1926 to 1929,

Dali begun making objects loaded with modern sexual symbols. For example, showing a

dirty figure filled with excrement as in 'The Lugubrious Game' done in 1929. At this

period, surrealists were very attracted to Salvador Dali because of his strong personality

and his violent works and paintings full of sexual and excrements allusions (Neret, 2000,

p.21).

The trompe-l'oeuil photographs, by Salvador Dali, took surrealist paintings to another

level by using techniques never used before. These paintings are filled with unusual

shapes, double-sided figures and, anamorphosis, that are distorted images that could be

well understood only if seen from a certain angle. They made him "a quarter century in

advance, the patron saint of American photo-realists" (Nйret, 2000, p.27). They were

used to transcribe the image of Dali's dreams. This was a revelation in his surrealist

paintings mainly caused by a very special person in Dali's life called Gala.

As a person, Salvador Dali was very special and had a revelation in his life by meeting

Helena Diakonoff or Gala. It all begun by a visit of Andre Breton, Louis Aragon and,

Paul Eluard to Dali. They were three masterminds of the surrealism movement. At this

time, Gala was Paul Eluard's wife and the minute she entered Salvador's home

everything changed in his life. She was for Dali, "the woman of his childhood dream"

(qtd. in Nйret's book, 2000, p.21). She was all the women he represented in his

paintings before meeting her. Dali announced that "the small of her back was extremely

Salvador Dali 6

feminine and pronounced [...] and, the energetic leanness of her torso, her delicate

buttocks and, the slenderness of her waist enhanced and rendered greatly more

desirable" (qtd. in Nйret's book, 2000, p.22).

Dali had extremely intense feelings towards Gala. Every time he started talking to her,

he burst into insane laughter and when she used to leave, Dali fell to the ground. He

believed that his love to Gala was perpetual and he declared that "she was destined to be

my Gradiva, my victory, my wife" (qtd. in Nйret, 2000, p.24). He never felt that happy in

his life and stated that "the idea that in my own room where I was going to work there

might be a women, [...], suddenly struck me as so seductive that it was difficult for me to

believe this could be realized" (qtd. in Nйret, 2000, p.36).

Once, Dali asked Gala what does she want him to do. At that time, he had just read

Jensen's novel, Gradiva, in which the heroine succeeds in healing the male protagonist

psychologically. She said she wants him to kill her. He then noted "one of the lightning

ideas that flashed into my mind was to throw Gala from the top of the bell-tower" (qtd. in

Nйret, 2000, p.26). But, right then, Dali realized that Gala weaned his crime and cured

him, because he had reached the great trial of his life, "the trial of love" (Ion,1994,p.36).

At this point, he was healed from his hysterical symptoms and was back to life again after

Gala's psychological help. He claimed, "I became master again of my laughter,

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