Dalí wanted to bury Gala with a red Dior. It was one of his favorite dresses. From both. In the end his body was covered with a simple white shroud and rests in the crypt under the Castle of Púbol, the ruined building that Dalí bought in a small town in Ampurdán and restored (in a surreal way) for Gala, the castle that She only accepted on one condition: Dalí could only visit her with a written invitation. It was one of his polite love games.
Púbol was Gala's home. There he kept his collection of Russian books and his splendid dresses. At the end of her life she formed a museum-worthy couture wardrobe. And now some of those dresses come to light: three Dior models. A Dior that he shared with Dalí. In Púbol, a peculiar ménage à trois is resurrected : Gala Dalí Dior. Of art and fashion, an exquisite exhibition focused on the relationship between three bands of the Dalí and the fashion designer; a relationship that dates back to the Paris of the 1930s, when Dior was not yet Dior or Dalí was still Dalí. Back then, Christian Dior ran a small art gallery with his partner Pierre Colle . And he exposed several times to a young Savior.
"Dior was one of the first people in Paris to worry about selling my unsaleable surrealist paintings," Dalí acknowledged in a column in the New York Post. Sales didn't go too well, but in the summer of 1933 he exhibited for the first time the iconic retrospective Bust of a Woman (his sculpture of a woman with a loaf of bread on his head) or Automatic Beginning of a portrait of Gala , a canvas. I sketch with Gala's face and her hair finished in laurel branches. Pure surrealism. Although the Pierre Colle ended up closing in 1934, Dior and the Dalí forged a bond that would last for life.
It was not until 1946, when he was 39, that Dior officially opened his fashion maison . And with her first haute couture show in February 1947, she revolutionized feminine aesthetics. The New Look was born , that elegant silhouette of wide skirts and tight bodies, with a wasp waist. "I drew flower-women, with soft backs, an enlarged bust, a fine complexion like vines and long skirts like corollas," Dior defined it. Of course, Gala was a champion of that New Look. And while Dior broke the patterns of fashion, Dalí painted Atomic Leda and invented nuclear mysticism (an exaltation of Gala in suspended-space). Two transformations of women: one from fashion and the other from art.
Dalí's relationship with Coco Chanel or Elsa Schiapparelli is better known. Dior's has been less studied, although both shared the same imaginary. There has never been an exhibition about Dior seen from Dalí's point of view, "says Montse Aguer, director of the Gala Salvador Dalí Foundation, which inaugurates a new exhibition (and research) line focused on Dalí's relationship with fashion . And how did Dalí see Dior? Like another artist, obsessed with perfection (like himself). Dalí himself wrote it: «I will paint the portrait of Gala with the Dior dress she wore on Christmas night. A brocade dress made up of tiny scales of all colors. The most difficult thing to paint in the world ». That dress "should be the most expensive painting in the world," added Dalí.
And Gala? Dior was one of his favorite designers. She wore her dresses in the few photographic reports she accepted, such as that of Vogue magazine . «Gala used fashion to give an image of herself, she voluntarily chose the clothes in which she wanted to be remembered. She built that look a bit dandy herself and left an important legacy in dresses, " says Montse Aguer. In Gala's vision, Dior is inseparable from Dalí: "Christian Dior has made a study of Dalí's paintings and has transgressed his point of view." If Dalí painted Dior dresses on more than one occasion, the designer was inspired by the painter and created a Dalí outfit for his autumn-winter 1949-1950 collection.
Gala Dalí Dior has its highlight at a party. On September 3, 1951, the Dance of the Century was held in Venice , as announced. It was the first major aristocratic party after World War II, devised by the flamboyant billionaire Carlos de Beistegui . All the jet set and European intelligentsia went to the Palazzo Labia. Dior and Dalí designed the most extravagant costumes: seven-meter giants, inspired by the Catalan tradition of gegants but with the surreal Dalinian touch and Dior sewing. They drew not only in the baroque palazzo but also through the alleys and canals of Venice. Although the dance was not without some controversy: both the Church and the Communist Party considered it a frivolity , an unnecessary expense in an Italy in full reconstruction.
In 1960 Dalí rescued these costumes and staged a parade in the fishing village of Portlligat to celebrate that he had been awarded the Gerona Gold Medal. And the Milky Way in his garden became a walkway. Even today, those giants still hang in the Portlligat house, where Dalí had them exposed. And although he did not bury Gala with that red Dior, he kept it in Púbol.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more- art
- culture
Performing Arts Host, the new performing arts festival, arrives in Seville, Cádiz, Huelva and Almería with assemblies of twenty-eight companies
CultureThirty concerts and poetry recitals in the Musics and Museums program to be held in Seville and Malaga
CultureA copy of the Immaculate Conception of Murillo, disfigured "a la Ecce Homo de Borja"
See links of interest
- Last News
- English translator
- TV programming
- Quixote
- Work calendar
- Daily horoscope
- Santander League Ranking
- League calendar
- TV Movies
- Themes
- Last minute elections
- Wolverhampton Wanderers - Everton
- Espanyol - Eibar
- Formula 1 Styrian Grand Prix
- Aston Villa - Crystal Palace
- Levante - Athletic Club