Biography of Gala Dali, muse of the Spanish artist Salvador Dali – March 10, 2024 Posting in CHAT: Russia They lived together for more than 50 years. Source: press service of the Faberge Museum. She is an ordinary Russian girl, whose mother gave birth to her lover. He is a shy virgin who will become a great artist. Thanks to her - Galya. Russian wife and muse of Salvador Dali. She was from Kazan, had many lovers, became friends with Tsvetaeva and left her daughter for Dali. Gala Dali - who is she and why did she drive men crazy with her rather ordinary appearance? We tell you what is known about the only muse of the great artist. Ordinary Galya, originally from Kazan, Galya did not like to talk about her origin and even throw a fog of mystery over it. And her name was not Galina, but Elena, and there is a strange story about her paternity, and it is unclear how long she lived in Kazan. Elena Gomberg-Dyakonova was born in Kazan in 1894, although some local historians question even this part. biographies. Yes, according to the calendar, the name Elena was chosen for the future muse, although even in the family they did not call her that. The family said “Galya”, which later became Gala. According to the elders, Gala was born on the spot where the house-museum of Vasily Aksenov now stands in Kazan - on Karl Marx Street. Her lineage has a dark history. There are hints that the girl appeared in the family of Tomsk judge Ivan Dyakonov - a man who could not really graduate, but built a career thanks to his banker father. Another version says that Gala was a bastard. Her mother Antonina immediately after the wedding lost interest in her henpecked husband and went to Kazan to study as a midwife. Ivan could not stay with her for long and returned to work in Tomsk. Antonina was considered a lady with oppositional feelings and allegedly had affairs with revolutionaries in Kazan. Because of her free-thinking, the authorities began to “watch her” since the Tomsk years, when, in the presence of colleagues, her wife spoke sharply about the portrait of Emperor Alexander III: “Why hang this bastard on the wall?” Gala and Salvador in 1941 Source: Mary Evans/Global Look Press For some time, Antonina moved from Kazan to Moscow, where she met her true love - student Dmitry Gomberg. Now researchers believe that Antonina gave birth to Gala and three more children from him, although she She was also married to a half-educated judge. The lovers arrived in Kazan in 1892–1893 with their first child in their arms. Gomberg transferred to the Faculty of Law of Kazan University. Antonina got a job as a midwife. In 1894, her second child, Gala, was born. The girl herself, it seems, was more interested in her mother’s second husband and even changed her middle name from Ivanovna to the stylized Dimitrievna. Galina Gomberg could hardly tell anything about Kazan, because she lived here only for the first year her life. And again, there is an empty space in her biography: according to other sources, Gala grew up in Kazan until she was almost 11 years old; Dali’s wife herself could have dispelled the rumors, but she preferred to mystify her life. That is why local historians and genealogists piece by piece collected her biography. She was friends with Tsvetaeva and raised “the father of French surrealism.” Let's stick to the modern version that in 1895 the Gombergs left for Moscow again. The stepfather (father?) spared no expense on the education and health of his large family, although in Gala’s teenage years they were tormented by financial problems. The future muse studied at the prestigious women's gymnasium named after Bryukhonenko. At school she became friends with Anastasia Tsvetaeva, the younger sister of the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. The future memoirist described Gala as a thin, long-legged girl in a short dress. - Narrow face, light brown braid with a curl at the end. Unusual eyes: brown, narrow, slightly set on the chin. The dark thick eyelashes were so long that, as friends later claimed, two matches could be placed side by side on them. There is stubbornness in her face and that degree of shyness that makes her movements abrupt,” Tsvetaeva wrote about her. The future star of the Silver Age also spent time in the company of her sister and friend. chewed sticky toffee. Gala ran home to the Tsvetaevs, where she absorbed the creative atmosphere. “Gala behaved with the dignity of true pride - completely simply, naturally, on her own, not approving of questions about why she was dressed worse than others, not denying paying attention to her dresses,” Anastasia recalled. In those years, Gala was secretive, attentive, but with powerful intellectual potential. Later these qualities developed and turned her into a vampire. Gala and Salvador in 1951 Source: JH/AP At the age of 18, Gala was sent to Switzerland for treatment for tuberculosis. There she met Eugene Grendel. Gala came up with a more noble pseudonym for him - Paul Eluard; under this name in the future the world will recognize the father of French surrealism. And when they met, he was just the 17-year-old son of a wealthy real estate developer. It was a passionate romance, which resulted in a love correspondence after the young people went home: she to Russia, he to France. My parents were against this relationship: “Why do you need this Russian girl,” and their faith was different. But our heroine was not satisfied with this situation; at the age of 22 she left for Paris, and a year later she and Paul got married. Gala already warned then that you shouldn’t expect borscht from her and that she would always “shine like a cockatoo, smell like perfume and always have well-groomed hands with well-groomed nails.” For the first time, the energetic and smart Gala became the first. Eluard's muse, not Dali's. She transformed the shy, awkward Eugene Grendel into the sophisticated and deeply original Paul Eluard. Like many creative people of the early 20th century, their marriage was unusual. Eluard proudly showed his friends photographs of his naked wife and did not object when they became her lovers. Orgies were common in their home. When Gala turned 27, she became engaged to the German artist Max Ernst, for whom she posed. The husband not only knew about their relationship - one day the “rival” moved into his house. All bohemia knew about the love triangle; it was even considered PR. All these passions flared up in front of their little daughter Cecile. Meeting Dali: he shaved his armpits, she abandoned her daughter. In 1929, Salvador Dali appeared in Gala’s life. And they were introduced by her husband, who took her to Cadaqués in Spain. “He never stopped admiring his beloved Salvador, as if he deliberately pushed me into his arms, although I didn’t even see him,” said the socialite. . They say that the young artist wanted to impress the guest with his extravagant appearance: he cut up a silk shirt, shaved his armpits and painted them blue, rubbed his body with an original cologne made from fish glue, goat feces and lavender, and glued a red geranium behind his ear. . According to legend, when Salvador saw Gala in the window, he changed his mind, washed off the paint and went out in his usual form. Both immediately fell in love with each other and Gala allegedly said: “My boy, we will never leave each other.” At that time, Gala was 35, Dali was 10 years younger. Eluard had to pack his bags and return home without his wife. As “compensation,” Dali gave the poet a portrait. “I felt that I had a responsibility to capture the face of the poet, from whose Olympus I stole one of the muses,” the genius explained. Gala left not only her husband, but also her daughter. The girl was raised by her French grandmother Galatea Sfer Source: painting by Salvador Dali Dali, with his back turned, paints a portrait of Gala, with his back turned and immortalized by six virtual corneas, temporarily reflected in six mirrors. Source: painting by Salvador Dali Many were surprised by this union: a virgin artist and an insatiable adult woman who pursued young men posing for Dali. But in everyday life they compensated for each other: when they met, the shy and uncollected Dali was just standing on the threshold of fame. Gala became his producer, who promoted him as a fashion designer, looked for sponsors, organized exhibitions, and sold paintings. In moments of creative crisis, she forced her beloved to decorate shop windows, develop models of hats and ashtrays. She became both the wife and mother of a weak young man. “We never gave up in the face of failure.” We got out of this situation thanks to Gala's strategic skill. We didn't go anywhere. Gala sewed her own dresses, and I worked a hundred times harder than any mediocre artist,” noted Dali. In 1934, anticipating war, the couple went to America. Gala’s intuition did not let her down: in the USA her “boy” became wildly popular, and the country was gripped by “surreal fever.” They spent all the war years and the first post-war years in…