Salvador Dalí’s Wife Gala Is the Focus of a New Book

Salvador Dalí’s artistry is immeasurable, and his wife Gala Dalí had an integral role to play in that success.

In the just-released “Surreal: The Extraordinary Life of Gala Dalí,” her involvement with his career, life and escapades is explored. Author Michèle Gerber Klein details how, while surviving two World Wars, the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War, Gala Dalí was more than a muse and influenced cultural history in her own right.

A style setter, unofficial brand ambassador and business partner, she was also an artist, who collaborated with two of the 20^th century’s monumental talents — Paul Éluard and Salvador Dalí, both of whom she had been married to at different points. Her 12-year marriage with Éluard officially ended in divorce in 1929 and she wed Dalí that same year. As a sign of the depth of her input, Dalí even signed her name to his work on occasion.

During the five years spent researching and writing the Harper Collins-published page-turner, Gerber Klein managed to connect with a few sources that had never spoken to biographers of Dalí before, including William Rothlein (who was her lover later in life), her granddaughter Claire Sarti and the famed talk show host Dick Cavett. The author grasps the complexity of a creative mind, having also written “Charles James: Portrait of an Unreasonable Man.” The Dalís were so famous that they hired a clipping service to keep track of all their media coverage, but that abundance of information made some people use it, “however they chose to,” which led to “tons of misinformation,” said Gerber Klein, who combed through reams of material for accuracy including Dalí’s “secret diaries.” Written in Dalí’s version of French, the diary was discovered, translated and published by the Salvador Dalí Foundation.

With personal ties to Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, the pair had unmistakable style. The crossover between art and fashion is something that Salvador and Gala started and participated in, the author said, adding that their work has influenced Rei Kawakubo and Thierry Mugler, among others. “She’s not Charles James. She didn’t invent the puffer or the dress with the zipper, but she invented an attitude toward fashion — not alone — but that exists today,” Gerber Klein said.

Painted endlessly by her husband in all kinds of roles, the couple explored “the power of mythical images in such forms as Greek art, Christian art and any guise that had attracted and influenced people over a span of hundreds of years,” Gerber Klein said. “She would become that person in Salvador’s paintings, but almost as a reversal. Instead of Gala as Venus, he would almost flip to make it Venus as Gala,” Gerber Klein said. “He called her ‘the unique mythological woman of our times.’ She cared deeply about art, and she cared deeply about being part of arguably very great art. She not only inspired it, but had participated in it.”

Born Helena Diakonova in Kazan, a region of Russia, Dalí grew up in Moscow. As a teenager, she met and fell in love with Éluard at the Clavadel sanatorium in Switzerland, where she taught him how to write poetry. At 21, during WWI, she traveled from Russia to Sweden to England and back across the English Channel, which was laden with mines set by the German military forces, to get to Paris to be with Éluard. Together, they became wrapped up in Surrealism as a lifestyle that encapsulates art, literature, music and politics. The couple wed in 1917, and Éluard would become a prestigious French poet.

The pair were once romantically involved with the artist Max Ernst, Gerber Klein said. After WWI, Éluard had lent Ernst his French passport to sneak out of Germany where the artist was stuck under the Weimar Republic. Ernst then lived with the Dalís for a stretch when they were together.

Gala met Salvador Dalí in 1929 and wed him in 1934, only after Éluard wrote her a letter urging her to tie the knot in order to avoid not inheriting anything from the artist, should he die. According to Gerber Klein, Dalí’s father said that Salvador would have been living under a bridge somewhere had he not met Gala. The Dalís cared so deeply about their legacy that they built a museum to make sure that their legacy would be preserved as they wanted it to be, Gerber Klein said.

Despite being more straight-laced than her more outrageous husband, Dalí could be imaginative, too. For a 1939 window display in the department store Bonwit Teller, her idea to decorate a naked mannequin with green feathers and place it in a fur-lined bathtub was short-lived. When management replaced the form with one in a more sellable tailored suit, Gala urged her husband to do something. After unsuccessfully trying to explain the situation to the guards, he pushed past them, and reportedly jerked the moorings from the tub, which shattered the window. That landed the artist in jail and resulted in a lot of publicity. Gala’s first husband Éluard wrote to say, ‘This is great. You’re going to sell a lot of paintings.’” Gerber Klein said.

The Dalís hit it off with Schiaparelli, who delighted in making inventive designs. Together they crafted items such as a compact with an enamel lid that resembled a telephone dial, and the 1937 shoe hat, which looked like an upside down shoe. It was inspired by a photograph of Dalí’s wife, wearing a woman’s shoe as a hat. The author said, “From 1935 on, there was the menace of Germany, the world was very unstable and Spain was unraveling and heading into civil war. It was a period of time when imagination and fantasy was really attractive, and fashion crossed over into art.” Another collaborative example was the 1938 “Tears dress,” which was named by Dalí, who created the trompe-l’oeil print for the Schiaparelli frock inspired by his paintings.

The couple connected with Chanel through Éluard, whose mother was the head of an atelier. Éluard dedicated one of his poetry books to Chanel and wrote a poem to her. “She saw Gala as an up-and-comer, and she started giving her clothes. She was kind of an influencer girl, an informal model, would wear Chanel clothes to parties with socialites, who bought art, and in the art world,” Gerber Klein said. “She gave her clothes and lent her clothes. We can’t find the clothes. When she died, the clothes disappeared. She also had a lot of Chanel jewelry, but nobody knows where it is.”

The Dalís also stayed at “La Pausa,” Chanel’s house in the South of France, where in 1938, the artist was working on a portrait of Gala wearing a Chanel turban, Gerber Klein said. The couple was also photographed there by Huntington Hune for Harper’s Bazaar, while working together in the tall grasses on the painting “Endless Enigma.”

Partial to fitted, high-style clothing, Gala would later give designer attire like Dior items a novel twist by removing the pockets and making tweaks of her own. “She was of the day, but she also inspired the clothing,” Gerber Klein said. “It wasn’t exactly relaxed. It was simply very chic and slightly understated. But the cut was chic enough that you would turn your head and notice her.”