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Perhaps Salvador Dalí would not have developed his unprecedented personality or his genius as an icon of surrealism without Gala, his muse, wife and according to his detractors, the dominant and money-hungry "witch" who exploited his work. This August 8 se celebrate 65 years of his wedding by the Church in the Girona Sanctuary dels Angels, of which there are no photos because the secretary of the court, the only one of the five assistants who was not a priest, was veiled the reel. They had married civilly in 1934 at the Spanish consulate in Paris, but they repeated around the church because Dalí was fascinated by that religious paraphernalia. "I love the organ, the trumpet, the bishop, all that ritual, I would get married many times," he said.

In reality the parties were the opposite of a couple sanctified by the church: addicted to sexual transgression, they practiced ménage à trois, and free love. She with young boys and he exercising voyeurism or masturbation with ephebes and prostitutes, although he reserved intercourse for Gala "I only make love with Madame Dalí".

Born in Russia in 1894, her name was Elena Ivanovna, and she was a woman with an androgynous air and aquiline nose whom Dalí described as "a female ephebe". Sophisticated and with great artistic sensibility, she married the French surrealist poet Paul Eluard in 1917. They met in a Swiss sanatorium where they were both treated for tuberculosis and had a daughter, Cecile, but Gala was not made for home or motherhood and, while Elourd worked in her family's real estate agency, she suffered from depression.

He ended up leaving his daughter in the care of his grandparents, which allowed the couple to open up to the world, travel, frequent intellectual circles and spend the summer on the Côte d'Azur. In Germany they met the painter Max Ernst, who became intimate with Eluard, later Gala's lover, and ended up settling in Paris in the couple's house. A trio that the poet supported financially, because the painter did not even have canvases, until he got tired and fled to Saigon. But he had great dependence on Gala, he did not even dare to publish verses without her acquiescence, so Ernst ended up breaking with her, defining her as "an evil presence".

In 1929 a young Dalí, who at the age of 25 began to be compared with masters such as Picasso or Miró, visited Paris, being well received by the circles of Dadaists and avant-garde where Paul Eluard and Gala moved, who that summer changed the Côte d'Azur for Cadaqués. Dalí offered them his hospitality and was soon attracted by the strong personality of Gala, ten years older, and they began an initially platonic relationship, because according to the painter it took three months to take her to bed. Nothing strange, because Dalí had a complex sexuality: he was terrified of penetration in case he caught a venereal disease, and went to brothels to masturbate contemplating prostitutes. He is also attributed a latent homosexuality, because he maintained with Federico García Lorca a stormy relationship that lasted until the murder of the poet, and the painter defined Ian Gibson as an "erotic and tragic" love. In reality Dalí was full of childhood traumas, phobias and obsessions, for example in Paris he suffered anxiety attacks if he crossed the street alone and sat in the last row of the cinema in case he needed to run away.

His beginnings with Gala were difficult, because the painter's father, a notary by profession, disapproved of him walking with a married woman and in Cadaqués nobody wanted to accommodate them, having to stop at a hut that a neighbor gave them, which affected Gala's fragile health.

Gala and DalíGTRES

The couple, at the entreaties of Elouard, who depended like a baby on his wife, returned to Paris, settling in Montmartre in a house paid for by the poet, from which Gala finally divorced, joining Dalí civilly. They remained in France during the Spanish Civil War and then traveled to New York, where they were well received, initiating the distribution of roles that would raise them to fame, and would bring succulent benefits: Gala got patrons, clients and galleries, while Dalí painted and acted as a "mad genius". In 1948 they returned to Spain and Gala established herself as Dalí's "muse": in addition to being a dealer, she helped him choose the surrealist elements of his paintings, and posed as a model but deciding how he wanted to appear, ultimately "building Dalí's artistic gaze," which he recognized by signing GalaSalvadorDalí .

With fame and money they began to pilgrimage to their mansion in Portlligat luxury bohemians and stars such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Mia Farrow or Andy Warhol who enjoyed their happenings in Cadaques, also their New York teas at the Saint Regis or lavish Parisian parties.

But the couple was declining, and while Gala collected young lovers that she brought home before the eyes of the painter, Dalí continued with his voyeurisms and masturbations, although he also had lovers, such as the singer Amanda Lear. In the end, they became a decrepit old couple who detested each other as much as they depended on each other.

They say that Gala administered amphetamines and sedatives to the painter, which she also consumed, which caused episodes of great violence between them, until she retired to the castle of Pubol, and according to contract, he could not visit her without her authorization. He died in June 1982, leaving Dalí more alone than ever, with his mind out of reality and surrounded by a circle of raptors who isolated him until he died on January 23, 1989, bequeathing all his work and rights to the Spanish state. He was buried in Figueras, far from Gala, whose remains remained in the castle of Pubol.

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