The museum, which focuses as much on art installations as paintings, is part gallery, part fun house. It's practically a surrealistic display in itself to watch visitors troop in front of the artwork and pull back the corners of their eyes to create the illusion. The same effect can be achieved by squinting. Deposit a coin and look through a machine to watch the painting transform into an image of the 16th U.S. It looks like his nude wife from the rear. One of the first paintings museum visitors see is "Gala Nude Looking at the Sea, Which at a Distance of Eighteen Meters is Transformed into a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)." There's no hint of scandalous living or of the glance that her first husband said could pierce walls. In her portraits, Gala looks ordinary and quite respectable. In paintings she can be seen floating nude with a swan, emerging from the ground with lamb chops on her shoulders, and exploding into spheres. Some doubted the news, but before there was time for protest the body was buried in a grave that was begun two days before his death. Dali spent his final years in joyless seclusion, tended to by guardians and refusing at times to eat.Īlthough he had intended to be buried next to his wife, the mayor of Figueres said Dali told him in his last days of a wish to remain in the museum. He gave up painting and moved into a tower of his museum in the commercial city of Figueres. Two years later, a fire broke out in the building, and the artist nearly died when he was trapped in his four-poster bed. That Dali isn't there with her is one of the many controversies surrounding the artist.Īfter Gala's death, Dali moved into the home and became a recluse. She now lies in a crypt in the basement, where a small giraffe sculpture keeps guard. In the garage remains the blue Cadillac with Monaco license plates that Dali used to take Gala's body on a final ride around the castle before burial. The image is adapted from "The Angelus," a painting by 19th-century French artist Jean Francois Millet. One of Dali's recurring images, a picture of farmers stopping to pray, is found in the oddest places: on wine bottles and flour canisters. There's also the surprisingly plain bathroom and kitchen, and the almost quaint knickknacks distributed throughout. Gala's dresses, creations by Dali and designers such as Chanel, still fill rooms upstairs. Only after her death, at age 88 in 1982, did the artist move in full-time.Ī transparent coffee table is built over a hole in the floor so the occupants could look down to the foyer to see who was knocking at the door. Biographers say that with Dali's consent, Gala spent her final years entertaining a succession of lovers drawn from nearby farming and fishing settlements. He designed it for Gala, and, in a masochistic contract, he insisted that he could visit only at her written invitation. Dali even incorporated her name into his signature.ĭali stayed intermittently at the castle. She became his lifetime inspiration, model, business manager and companion. But she and Dali were drawn to each other. Gala, a Russian named Elena Eluard at the time, was married to French poet Paul Eluard. The two met in 1929 when a group of surrealistĪrtists, writers and bohemians gathered in Cadaques. "Every time Gala looks up she will always see me in her heaven," he said.ĭali's devotion to Gala, who was 10 years his senior, cannot be overstated. The ceiling is painted with a scene of angels and the moon. Doors emblazoned with G's provide a touch of royalty, as does the throne he designed for her.
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