Gala's Púbol. Illusion and Reality by Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí

TEMPORARY EXHIBITION Dalí Castle in Púbol

Gala

The Gala Dalí Castle or Gala’s Púbol, a house-museum and a unique portrait 09

The Forms of Gala LUCIA15MONI

BEA CRESPO

MONTSE AGUER TEIXIDOR

JORDI ARTIGAS CADENA

The love of Italy as the backdrop to the Castle of Púbol

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would like, in this short text, to delve into and share the different lines of research and of reasoning that have led us to define the exhibition we present in Púbol; in Gala’s Púbol, a title given to us by Dalí himself, written on one of the parchments that form the little table-cum-skylight in the Piano Room of the castle.

In this exhibition we have started from a portrait of Gala, an enigmatic portrait on copper, the metal giving it a luminosity very different from that

Gala’s MONTSEIllusionPúbol.andrealityAGUERITEIXIDOR,DIRECTOROFTHEDALÍMUSEUMS

The starting point of this exhibition, created with rigorous scientific criteria but also in a poetic spirit, is Gala: Gala, and Púbol as an image of Gala. The lady of the castle, the visible woman, mysterious and intellectual, the free woman, the woman who declares that in time she will become a legend; the woman that Dalí took, blindfolded, to Púbol, where he offered her the castle as a gift which she accepted on the sole condition that he must only visit her there by written invitation.

PÚBOL.

GALA’S ILLUSION AND REALITY

If we immerse ourselves in the portrait, we see Gala in a red print dress, reminiscent of traditional Russian costume, in which gold is also present. A stylish, fashionable Gala wearing an Elizabeth Arden New York dress and a costume jewellery necklace with imitation turquoises that is the same as the one in the photograph from 1978. A striking combination of colours

of canvas. This painting, around 1976, was shown for the first time at the Galerie André François Petit in Paris in 1977. The following year, in an exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York, the Portrait of Gala was shown in a sumptuous frame in the Louis XV style, with its characteristic carving and gilding [Fig. 1]. For some of his paintings, Dalí went to the trouble of choosing the frame himself, and we have outstanding examples of this in the Dalí Theatre Museum in Figueres, such as the Self Portrait of 1921 and The Spectre of Sex Appeal (c. 1934). For this exhibition we have opted for a frame that brings out the uniqueness of the piece and endows it with a special identity.

Fig. 1 Gala in front of Portrait of Gala at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, 1978. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

line of research we have the Sunday newspaper supplement The American Weekly, for which Dalí created a series of remarkable covers. For the article ‘Social Life’, in the issue of January 9, 1938, Dalí presents a sequential, almost cinematic composition of different scenes [Fig. 2]. There is a castle in the upper left corner, like a castle in a fairy tale, which is interesting from our present vantage point for the mention Dalí makes of it in the text that accompanies the cover: this seems to be a premonition of the Castle of Púbol and of the promise he was to make to Gala in Italy: a castle for the two lovers, and for the lady, who obsessively seeks both solitude and also freedom.

An article entitled ‘The American City Night and Day by Dalí’, in an earlier number of the same Sunday supplement, dated March 31, 1935, contains a statement which takes on a special significance in the designing of this exhibition in Púbol: ‘He declares that his work resembles that of madmen and mediums. The difference between a madman and a super-realist is

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that is both elegant and stylish. An emblematic dress that Gala would wear on occasions she felt to be special, such as the day of the inauguration of the Dalí Theatre Museum in Figueres on 28th September 1974. This is not, however, the dreamed or idealised Gala but a real, almost a hyperreal Gala; a Gala whom the artist represents in a manner closely resembling one of the photographs that Marc Lacroix took of her in Púbol.

Incastle.asecond

The portrait, which calls for prolonged contemplation, is steeped in trompe l’œil in the kind of optical illusion that is so present in Dalí’s work, and a major presence in Púbol. The reality is at one and the same time one thing another. Gala is painted on a canvas, a canvas that is not real but painted, on a copper plate, the copper giving a special transparency to the portrait as a whole and to the textures and the warm bright colours of the dress in particular. Dalí presents us with a representation within a representation, from the reproduced canvas to the corporeal copper. And, as he often does in Púbol, he uses trompe l'œil in the background, a background with a crumbling wall which almost certainly alludes to the

that the madman confuses two worlds: illusion and reality, while the super realist knows the difference.’ It is precisely this difference between illusion and reality, so Dalinian, so surreal, that has led us to create two clearly

Fig. 2 The American Weekly, 9/01/1938, New York Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

PÚBOL.

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differentiated areas within the exhibition and also to include the screening of a few minutes of the documentary film The Refuge of the Visible Woman (1982 1989), directed by David Pujol and produced by the Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, which offers an in depth look at Púbol and at Gala and Dalí.

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In the first area of the exhibition, to the right of the entrance, which we define as that of illusion, there are drawings related to Púbol, the castle designed by Gala and Dalí. In some of these drawings, on show here for the first time, Gala is presented as an idealised figure; for example, in the little pavilion in the garden, with a cypress tree and the heraldic and royal symbol of the fleur de lis. A Gala who is shown contemplating the roses, calling to mind the roses of her childhood in Crimea; a Gala who is incorporated into the architecture, as in the projects for the ceiling of the castle; or a Gala surrounded by trompe l'œil images, which so well define Púbol and this illusion / reality dichotomy that is always an aspect of the Gala / Dalí binomial. A Gala with her iconic bow, a Gala reminiscent of the lady in the fresco in the Palazzo Borromeo in Milan known as Il Gioco della Palla (The Ball Game), probably painted between 1445 and 1450 [Fig. 3], the same lady, Gala, who is the subject of this study and who reminds us of the influence of Italian palazzi and French châteaux in the very conception of Púbol.

In the second area, in the display case on the left, ‘reality’ manifests itself, as we suggested at the start of this short text, with the portrait of Gala on copper, accompanied by the actual dress and necklace and the photograph with incisions that served as a model for the painting and brings us closer to Dalí's creative process. A portrait of a real Gala, framed in a canvas which is an optical illusion and with a trompe l’œil background, which could be Púbol, who looks at us and at the inexorable passage of time.

Púbol, Gala’s Púbol in this case, is the most scenographic of the Dalís’ spaces and has strong links to Gala and her vital force. It is also the one in which Gala's involvement is most palpable, in both its conception and its projection, as a place that she held very dear. On this point, in a letter to the builder Emilio Puignau, a friend of the Dalís, dated February 17, 1970, Gala wrote: ‘As you may have realised, Púbol is my "hobbyhorse"; or rather,

GALA’S ILLUSION AND REALITY

It is our hope that this exhibition may afford the visitor entry to a singular poetic world, at once mythic and real, which tells us about Gala and Dalí, and a unique scenographic universe, both creative and vital. Gala seen by Dalí, seen by us, and seen by herself or as she wanted us to see her, between the illusion of being and the reality of existing.

Fig. 3 Il gioco della palla, c. 1445 1450, Palazzo Borromeo, Milan

1 Handwritten letter from Gala to Emilio Puignau, 17/02/1970 (Figueres, Centre for Dalinian Studies, Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, ID. 40617).

PÚBOL.

it is ours. I am fascinated by the possibilities that may arise from this ruined house, it may even turn out a monster. Until now, working together, we have always triumphed, at Portlligat. That little house has become famous, there are prints of it everywhere, even now. This being so, you and I bear a great responsibility for a great success.’ 1

The Gala Dalí Castle or Gala’s Púbol, a house-museum and a unique portrait

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‘The house is the place in which the inhabitant situates his or her life in order to create a home.’ 1 In other words, the occupant takes possession of a space set apart from the outside world by a box of walls, intervenes in it and adapts it to their way of life before ultimately endowing it with

1 Translated from: Gustau Gili Galfetti, Mi Casa, mi paraíso. La construcción del universo doméstico ideal, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1999, p. 7; My House, My Paradise: The Construction of the Ideal Domestic Universe, Gingko Press, Berkeley, CA, 1999.

JORDI ARTIGAS CADENA, COORDINATOR OF THE PÚBOL AND PORTLLIGAT HOUSE MUSEUMS

of Gala and Modernist lamp by Émile Gallé. Library of Gala Dalí Castle in Púbol

The degree of involvement of the occupant in the construction of their home determines its singularity or exceptionality in relation to other households; but above all it bears witness to a particular way of being. Thus, even where the degree of involvement seems to be minimal, as in the case of a standard inhabitant who tenants a standard apartment, the personalisation of the spaces is significant enough to reflect his or her personality: the colours of the wall, the layout and the types of furniture, the lighting, the service spaces and their relationship with the other rooms, and so

meaning. These are specific, personal and intimate places. Places where those who live there are fully empowered to express their own conception of the world.

on.Photographs

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2 See Pascal Griener, ‘Prendre la distance: Le Musée d’Artiste et les défis du XXIe siècle’ in: Yves Bergeron, Octave Debary, François Mairesse, Ecrire l’histoire des musées à travers celle de ses acteurs, ICOFOM, Paris, 2019, pp. 35 42.

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But the house is also a symbolic space where the relations of its inhabitants with the outside world come together, 2 and the place where the events of a particular life have happened in a specific historical moment, with all of the associated values, needs, contradictions and projections into the past and the future.

Whatever the case may be, the basic elements that determine the conversion of a private house into a museum are articulated on several axes. On the one hand, the inseparable link with a specific architectural construction 3 and a geographical place that have a particular, essential signification in the case of Salvador Dalí; on the other hand, there is the potential to offer the visitor an experience of suggestions that, stimulated by curiosity about the privacy of others and the contextualisation of objects, arouses emotions and a desire for knowledge. At this point, the romantic idea of genius, the personification of values and qualities that are recognised and admired by all, turning the personage and everything around them into an extraordinary whole, is paramount here. In the case of an artist’s house, the traditional idea that divides the creative process into conception, execution 4 and final work of art that takes shape in the studio must also be taken into account. The principal specificity of an artist's house lies, in a generic way, in the possibility of showing / interpreting the creative process and enjoying the work of art; two facts that can generate very different levels of reading

It follows that the houses of a person's life can provide a documentary and instrumental basis for understanding and a tool for multidisciplinary knowledge and dissemination. It is at this point that the concept of a house museum for a 21st Century society comes into play.

3 See the assessment of the architectural fact in: Isabella Palumbo, Michèle Caroline Heck, Christophe Morin et al., ‘Lieu architectural’, in Jean Gribenski, Véronique Meyer, Solange Vernois, La maison de l’artiste: construction d’un espace de représentations entre réalité et imaginaire (XVIIe XXe siègles), Presses Universitaire de Rennes, Rennes, 2007, pp. 13 105.

4 Cit. supra, n. 2, p. 38 39.

5 Laura Castro, ‘Demeures d’artistes et ateliers, une muséalisation paradoxale : une réflexion sur quelques cas au Portugal’, Culture & Musées, No. 34, 2019, pp. 171 198. Link: https://doi.org/10.4000/culturemusees.4064 [date accessed: 22/04/2022]

In the case of Salvador Dalí, his personal involvement in the conception and construction of the architectural spaces is sufficiently important for us to regard the house as a work of art in its own right, as an act of creation in finished form rather than just a container for a person’s possessions or a space to live in. The visitor’s engagement with the houses of Salvador Dalí may lead to enjoyment or to aesthetic rejection, but, more than that, it can also spark a process of reflection on the intellectual proposals of the artist.

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The Púbol premises of the Dalí Museums, the Gala Dalí Castle House Museum, presents all of the elements mentioned above together with a series of interpretive resources, of note among which is the temporary exhibition. Since it was opened, the temporary exhibition space has become one of the most effective of these resources, in that it allows the discourse of the house museum itself to be reinforced without altering Dalí's scenographic work, while the collection presents the visitor with the results of the different lines of research of the Centre for Dalinian Studies. It is also an observatory, serving to assess the impact on visitors of the different topics engaged with.

depending on the purpose of the musealisation and the way in which the artist’s memory is transmitted. 5

Another of the elements of the house museums that makes them particularly attractive is their almost intrinsic ability to transfer the active role of the curator to the eye of the observer, and in so doing to allow the visitor to see what they have some inclination to see, or what they think they are going to see. 6

6 ‘We see what we have reason to see; above all, what we have the conviction that we will see.’ Salvador Dalí, ‘Total Camouflage for Total War’, Esquire, New York, Vol. XVIII, No. 2, 08/1942, p. 130. Sp. trans. in: Obra completa, vol. IV, Assaigs I, Destino, Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Barcelona, Figueres, 2005, p. 555.

Salvador Dalí, Project for the Piano Room and Gala’s bathroom, c. 1969. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

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The exhibition Gala’s Púbol is a paradigmatic example of this. On the one hand, it reinforces the castle's own narrative centred on Gala's idiosyncrasies and desires: the castle as a reflection of a personality who cherished her independence and who, for all her public discretion and private fears, was clearly determined to be the protagonist of her existence, with a deeply felt commitment to sharing a vital project with Salvador Dalí and a firm determination to potentiate the genius of the artist. At the same time, the exhibition sets out the documentary materials bearing witness to the taking over of a medieval architectural space to give it a new signification rooted in the couple’s vital ideology. The visitor can see here at first hand the role of Salvador Dalí as the author of a unique architectural and interior design project at a moment in his life when Gala was to share prominence and dedication with the Dalí Theatre Museum in Finally,Figueres.the premise of the exhibition, structured around the idea that what is on display photographs, documents, clothes and drawings will confront us with the duality illusion / reality and give us an incentive, at an advanced stage in the itinerary, to go back to room 1 of the house museum and start again. Touring the castle again after taking in the exhibition is a ludic experience, allowing us to decipher an immanent reality, summon up the immediate memory and ascertain in situ what Dalí envisioned in his studio. At the same time, the image of Gala in the drawings, the ideal muse in her ivory tower of Púbol, and the hyperrealist portrait of Gala all speak to us of the illusion of time that permeates all of the decorative resources of the castle. Every one of the drawings heightens the sense that the house museum of Púbol, unlike the house studio of Portlligat, was for Gala a room of her own, a place where time stands still and is revisited. The exhibition Gala’s Púbol is a resource which enhances our capacity to discover and to observe what each of us wants or is able to see through the house museum of the castle of Púbol. It is an invitation to experience the illusion of reality through optical games and creative imagination. It is an emphatic affirmation of Salvador Dalí’s perseverance in creating a work of art exclusively for Gala

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The Forms of Gala

Cheri Gaulke, ‘Acting Like Women: Performance Art of the Women’s Building’, High Performance 3, 3 4, Fall 1980.

n a infinite play of masks, Gala is many different Galas. She is muse and creator, self effacing wife and femme fatale, dandy and manager. She is the woman who inspires the most captivating and most difficult lines of Paul Éluard and the Belle jardinière of Max Ernst’s murals at Eaubonne. She is the gaze that flashes through Man Ray’s photographs, the intelligence that dazzled Giorgio de Chirico and the apple of discord in the group of surrealists. She is also, and above all, Gala Gradiva, celle qui

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BEA CRESPO, CENTRE FOR DALINIAN STUDIES

Cheri Gaulke, visual artist

Performance is not a difficult concept to us. We’re on stage every moment of our lives, acting like women. 1

3 Estrella de Diego, Gala Salvador Dalí. A Room of One’s Own at Púbol, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2018, p. 150.

avance, 2 the decisive influence that spurred Salvador Dalí on to become the celebrated artist that he was destined to be.

of Estrella de Diego, when Gala acts as a model she is acting as a performer, a participant in the construction of her image. According to this author, Gala became a kind of dandy, who made of herself her own work of art. 3 On this reading, in Gala we have a model who is the mistress of her body and who actively decides who represents her and how. She was determined to take her place in history as a legend, 4 but in contrast to Salvador Dalí, who can be seen as an absolute exhibitionist, Gala's intention was to remain secret within her own secret and let the images of her do the speaking. She made this quite clear in one of the few statements she made to the press, in which she referred to three paintings by Salvador

We could say that Gala gave herself to the ones that she loved and loved her, and in this giving she carried out her most personal and non transferable task: the creation of her own myth. When we speak of loving here we use the word in the broadest sense and not only the romantic aspect. Some loved her with their body, some with their soul, some with the pen, and some with the paintbrush or the camera lens, but only one, Salvador Dalí, was to love Gala in every possible way and even be able to invent new ways. When all is said and done, what really matters is that the fascination, the curiosity, the passion should be in both directions. And that in this mutual ‘wonderment’ each should achieve excellence in the Inendeavour.thewords

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2 Salvador Dalí's dedication to Gala. Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Dial Press, Nova York, 1942.

4 ‘I intend to go down in History as a legend. I want to go down in history as a legend. When everything is over and done with, when everything that is now cloudy is clean, when time has passed, things will be said about me, for good or ill, but for now I do not want anything to be said.’ Translated from: Víctor Samaniego, ‘Gala’, Garbo, Barcelona,Madrid, 05/09/1964, p. 44.

Dalí that define her: ‘I am the portrait of myself. I am the nude Vu de Dos. I am Homer’s Apotheosis, and I am The Bread Basket.’ 5

6 We should not forget that Gala is, in a way, the quintessential collector of Dalí. From the beginning of her relationship with the artist, she was responsible for setting aside as not for sale major works that would come to constitute what we know today as the Dalí legacy collection.

7 Gala was totally involved in the project for the Castle of Púbol, supervising and managing the entire refurbishment process, as can be seen from her correspondence with the builder, and family friend, Emilio Puignau. In addition, she commissioned from Dalí with a series of decorative elements for the interior. See: Salvador Dalí, ‘Vogué: Numéro du cinquantenaire 1921/1972 réalisé par Salvador Dalí’, Vogue, Paris, No. 522, 1971/1972, p. 175.

Fig. 1 Salvador Dalí, Hirondelle de ciel (Swallow in the Sky), 1971. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

5 Salvador Dalí, ‘The Vernissage of Gala Salvador Dali’s Exhibition at the Bignou Gallery is taking place now’, Dali News, New York, 20/11/1945.

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Dalí created a great many works in which Gala is more or less evidently present: in some cases she is the spark that gives rise to a work, in others she is the principal motif, and very often she is its recipient; 6 sometimes, too, as in the case of Púbol, Gala was not o nly present in all these forms but was also involved in the conception. 7 As if it were the stage set for her latest performance, Gala, is present in almost every part of the castle and garden.

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Real and imagined, she appears in the form of a swallow [Fig. 1], a mollusc, Mediterranean strawflower, clover, fleur de lis, crown of milk, guardian angel, standard, hostess and lady [Fig. 2]. But of all the Galas who come forth to meet us in Púbol or who, without being there, suggest themselves to us, there is one that deserves special attention.

Fig. 2 Salvador Dalí, Project for the garden of Gala Dalí Castle, Púbol, c. 1970. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

This is the Portrait of Gala (c. 1976) [Fig. 3] which now, thanks to the exhibition, is temporarily a feature of the tour of the castle. The painting is directly based on a photograph of Gala that is part of an extended photo essay by Marc Lacroix, commissioned by the artist, who wanted to present the Castle of Púbol and its sovereign to the world in the special issue of the French edition of Vogue that he had been asked to design. 8 Gala, aware of the great importance of this publication, decided how she should appear in every instance, 9 and she took great care over the outfit in which she was to be immortalised in her castle. The ready to wear dress from Elizabeth Arden New York, accompanied by the costume jewellery necklace of

Fig.3 Salvador Dalí, Portrait of Gala, c. 1976. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

9 We know that it was Gala who chose Marc Lacroix to shoot the photographs and who had the final say in which of these were to be published. Dalí, Lacroix, Gala: el privilegio de la intimidad, Fundación Eugenio Granell, Santiago de Compostela, 2000, p. 56, 68.

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8 Cit. supra, n. 7.

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10 Gala opted for this outfit on certain outstanding occasions, such as the inauguration of the Dalí Theatre Museum in Figueres, on September 28, 1974, and Dalí’s induction as a foreign associate member of the Académie des beaux arts of the Institut de France, on May 9, 1979.

turquoise stones, was to become one of her most iconic looks in the seventies [Fig. 4]. 10

The combination has an orientalist and aristocratic air that ties in very well with all that Púbol represented for Gala: it was the refuge into which she poured her happy memories of Russia and the castle that symbolically legitimated her as queen, at last, of a place of her own. And yet, in the painting, despite the dress and the jewellery, Gala is more vulnerable and more naked than ever. We are struck here by an unusual verism in an artist

Fig. 4 Ready to wear dress by Elizabeth Arden New York and costume jewellery necklace, 1970s. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

11 In the oil on canvas Portrait of Gala (1975 1979), very close in its iconography and in the date of its creation, the depiction of Gala is much kinder, despite the enigmatic facial expression, which refers us in turn to the Portrait of Ginebra de’ Benci (1474 1476) by Leonardo da Vinci.

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Fig. 5 Salvador Dalí, Project for the garden of Gala Dalí Castle, Púbol, c. 1970. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

who habitually sublimated and idealised Gala in his work. 11 Almost as if it were the picture of Dorian Gray, the muse has been burdened with all her years and all her sins. The poetics of the ruin, so strongly sensed at Púbol, which embellishes the drawings and the decoration of the castle [Figs. 5 and 6], seems also to turn against Gala. The crumbling of the wall and the shadow creeping forward give the portrait a dramatic look that bears witness to the inescapable passage of time.

Fig. 6 Salvador Dalí, Project for the Coats of Arms Room of Gala Dalí Castle, Púbol, c. 1970. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

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This is not the first depiction of Gala in which something has been torn or broken. There is, for example, the torn dress and opened belly in Gradiva (1931); the egg from which the flower springs in Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937); the varnish that has flaked from the fingernail in Galarina (1945), or the exploding face in Gala Placidia (1952). The cracks that let in the light or the darkness, as it may be bring us closer to a more real Gala, she whom we encounter in her autobiographical writings: ‘Yes, it is thought that I am a fortress, well defended and perfectly organised, when at best I might be a small tottering tower that, out of modesty, tries to cover itself with thick ivy, conceal its by now deteriorated walls and find a bit of solitude.’ 12 [Fig. 7]

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12 Autograph manuscript by Gala, 1970s (Figueres, Centre for Dalinian Studies, Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, ID. 54715).

There is a sense in which Gala herself gives us the key to reading the painting. Often what we are able to know of her is no more than a small part, or an illusion, a trompe l'oeil. Púbol, as if it were an extension of Gala, seems to be pervaded by this idea and constantly to play at baffling the visitor, with openings that lead nowhere, painted screens that represent precisely what they set out to conceal, ceilings that open to the sky, tables that are also skylights and architectural features that mimic ruins. The oil painting that concerns us here also has a trompe l’oeil spirit. It seems to be a canvas, but is in fact a sheet of copper. What should be a portrait is more like a portrait, a simulacrum. Indeed, it seems likely that it says more about the artist than about the model. 13 Perhaps in seeing himself through Gala his twin, as he called her Dalí was made more aware than ever of his own ageing

13 ‘She [Gala] and she alone was reality; and all that my eyes were capable of seeing was “she”, and it was the portrait of her that would be my work, my idea, my reality.’ Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Dial Press, New York, 1942, p. 383.

Fig. 7 Authograph manuscript by Gala, 1970s Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

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The love of Italy as the backdrop to the Castle of Púbol

LUCIA MONI, CENTRE FOR DALINIAN STUDIES

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or both Dalí and Gala, a fascination with Italy was a life long constant. In fact, in 1935 the artist set out on his first trip to the country driven by her, as he recalled in The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí: ‘Gala was beginning to interest me in a trip to Italy. The architecture of the Renaissance, Palladio and Bramante impressed me more and more as being the startling and perfect achievement of the human spirit in the realm of esthetics, and I was beginning to feel the desire to go and see and touch these unique phenomena.’ 1 [Fig. 1]

1 Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Dial Press, New York, 1942, p. 352.

2 Ibid., p. 394.

3 Postcard from Salvador Dalí to J. V. Foix, from Modena, 4 October 1935, and letter from Salvador Dalí to J. V. Foix from Rome, 7 October 1935, in Salvador Dalí, Rafael Santos Torroella, Salvador Dalí corresponsal de J. V. Foix, 1932 1936, Mediterrània, Barcelona, 1986, pp. 148 151.

THE LOVE OF ITALY AS THE BACKDROP TO THE CASTLE OF PÚBOL 26

Fig. 1 Gala, Salvador Dalí and Edward James in Rome, c. 1936 Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

This enthusiasm for his ‘esthetic voyages to Italy’ 2 can also be seen in the postcards he wrote from Rome and Modena to his friend, the poet and essayist J. V. Foix, in which he was emphatic that the possibility of touring the country by car allowed him to ‘penetrate all of the “surreal corners” unknown to the tourists’ and ‘constantly discover unexpected things’. 3 If it had been possible for him to replace the car with a coach and four and go

Gala was to fulfil this desire to visit Italy on different occasions, either accompanying Dalí on the various projects he carried out there in the course of his life, or on trips of her own. 8 Italy had such a great power of attraction that in a postcard addressed to her ‘Petit Daris’ she wrote that she had discovered a very poetic place for the two of them in Sicily and that she would love nothing more than for him to obtain a passport and meet her there. In another postcard, possibly from the same trip, she tells him that she is exploring Rome and that everything makes her think of him. We

back in time, perhaps Dalí would romantically have chosen to travel in this way, given that in The Secret Life he praises Stendhal and Goethe's travels in Italy in an era in which ‘distances still “counted” and gave time to the intelligence to be able to measure all spaces and all forms, and all the states of the soul and of the landscape and of the architecture’. 4 In Rome, Dalí sought to follow in Stendhal’s footsteps, walking around the city with a volume of Stendhal in his hand, and was outraged to see how ancient Rome was being transformed to suit the needs of a modern city. 5 He also shared his rapture at the ruins, the decaying buildings and the contemplation of a remote past with Gala.

For more information on the travels of Dalí and Gala, see: Bea Crespo, Clara Silvestre, ‘Gala: The Chronology’, in Estrella de Diego, Gala Salvador Dalí. A Room of One's Own in Púbol, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2018, pp. 208 239; Rosa Maria Maurell, Lucia Moni, ‘Salvador Dalí in Italia’, in Dalí un artista un genio, Skira, Milan, 2012, pp. 227 263.

Cit. supra, n. 1, p. 52.

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Cit. supra, n. 1, p. 361 362.

Cit. supra, n. 1, p. 306.

Gala had been in Rome before, with Paul Éluard in 1923, to visit the painter Giorgio de Chirico, 6 and she may have travelled in Italy at an even earlier date. In The Secret Life, Dalí tells us of a very young, passionate and melancholy Gala in Moscow who, on her return from a brief trip to Florence with her father, had brought home a box of matches with the image of the cathedral: ‘Each time she wished to console herself for her hyperesthetic desire to return to Italy, she would light one of her precious matches.’ 7

Louis Aragon, Papiers inédits, de Dada au surréalisme : 1917 1931, Gallimard, Paris, p. 194.

are in the presence here of a passionate and determined Gala who wants to complete her tour, taking in a small town near Milan and the cities of Cremona and Brescia. 9

Autograph manuscript by Gala, 1970s (Figueres, Centre for Dalinian Studies, Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, ID. 54715).

THE LOVE OF ITALY AS THE BACKDROP TO THE CASTLE OF PÚBOL 28

Gala was longing for quiet, for peace, and in need of a secret place to hide away from the world. Dalí understood her anxieties very well and decided to give her ‘a setting more solemnly worthy of our love’: 12 a castle. The time had come for Gala to once more ‘be the queen she is, and I will do my best to be invited to that Castle.’ 13 It seems that Dalí, during a trip to Italy in the 1930s, had promised Gala a castle in Tuscany. 14 This promise that desire became reality thirty years later in the Baix Empordà.

Antonio Pitxot, Josep Playà, The Road to Púbol, Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Editorial Escudo de Oro, Figueres, Barcelona, 1997, p. 4.

Postcards from Gala to Salvador Dalí, undated (Figueres, Centre for Dalinian Studies, Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, ID. 41555, 41557, 41542).

Salvador Dalí, André Parinaud, The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1976, p. 272.

A. Marín, ‘Dalí prepara su propio museo en Figueras’, ABC, Madrid, 22/03/1970, p. 46.

Gala, like Dalí, was seduced by Italy; she read Stendhal and admired his meditative descriptions of visits to vestiges of the past. In a manuscript, probably from the 1970s, she revealed that she would have liked to return to Rome, a city she adored and wished to know every corner of, with the same balance and wisdom displayed by the French writer during his stay in the city in 1832. Gala was referring specifically to the first chapter of the autobiography that Stendhal published under the title Vie de Henry Brulard. 10 There, contemplating a place unlike any other in the world, ancient Rome with its ruins, the writer declares that, on the verge of turning fifty, he is glad to be alive. Gala, in contrast, reveals to us that she is returning to Rome torn apart, overwhelmed by anguish, confused and tormented in spirit. 11

Stendhal, Vie de Henry Brulard, Émile Paul, Paris, 1950. This volume is from the personal library of the artist preserved at the Centre for Dalinians Studies.

Brin, ‘Bomarzo, de moda’, Goya, Madrid, 30/09/1958, p. 115.

The couple’s shared fascination with Italy is reflected in Púbol, both outdoors and indoors. As we walk through the garden we may admire the long legged elephants, Dalí’s adoption and transformation of Bernini’s elephant with obelisk, which form a stone forest that calls to mind the Parco dei Mostri in Bomarzo near Rome. Dalí fell in love with this place and its sculptures during his stay in Italy in 1948; 15 so much so that he expressed a desire to buy it. 16 [Fig. 2]

GALA’S PÚBOL. ILLUSION AND REALITY 29

15 Dalí was working with Luchino Visconti, designing stage sets and costumes for Rosalinda o Come vi Piace, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, at the Teatro Eliseo in Rome in 1948.16Irene

Fig. 2 Salvador Dalí in the gardens of Bomarzo, 1948. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

17 Carlo Mazzarella, ‘Incontri’, Arti e scienze Cronache di attualità, 1959, Rai Teche (television interview).18Thistrompe

l'œil inspired Dalí to create the ceiling for the Palacete Albéniz in Barcelona, The Royal Hour, in or around 1969. The artist's library contained a copy of Joseph Fattorusso’s Wonders of Italy (Florence, 1937), with an intervention by Dalí on the page with the fresco of the Camera degli Sposi.

On entering the castle we once again find ourselves seduced by Dalí’s false perspectives. A play of trompe-l’oeil that manifests itself on radiator covers, doors and ceilings creates in the visitor a sensation of being in an enchanted castle full of mysterious hidden spaces and unexpected realities. The influence of Italy is evident again here, on the ceiling of the Coats of Arms Room, which takes up the idea of the oculus of Mantegna’s Camera degli Sposi in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua. 18 Similarly, the ceilings of both the Castle of Púbol and the Palace of the Wind in the Theatre Museum in Figueres owe something to the ceilings of Italian Baroque palaces. For example, Dalí had photographs of the frescoes by Andrea Pozzo in the central vault of the Church of St Ignatius of Loyola in Rome, in which the Gloria di Sant'Ignazio the apotheosis of the saint buoyed up by angels is pervaded by a mystical light that bathes the four allegorical figures symbolising the four continents.

The artist conceived secret places in the gardens in which the lady of the castle could lose herself in games of hide and seek; spaces with false perspectives. As the architect Francesco Borromini had done in 1653 with his illusionistic Colonnata of the Palazzo Spada, Dalí created a forced perspective on one of the paths, but with trees instead of columns. The artist was familiar with the Palazzo Spada: in 1959 the journalist Carlo Mazzarella had interviewed him right in front of Borromini’s gallery, designed to be perceived as a long colonnade. On that occasion Dalí also spoke of Palladio as ‘the architect of supreme beauty […] the archetype of the Dalinian for his false perspectives, and Dalí constantly in an almost perennial way lives in a false perspective’. 17

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GALA’S PÚBOL. ILLUSION AND REALITY 31

In the central ceilings in both the Castle and the Theatre Museum we have two very similar versions of the same scene, with angels and other characters ascending from the clouds; a big bright crescent moon and bursts of fire; a female figure who seems to wear a bow like the one that Gala wore in those years; and horses drawing Apollo's chariot (most evident in Dalí's first sketch for the Palace of the Wind), perhaps suggesting a mythological scene such in the manner of Guido Reni’s Aurora frescoes in

Fig. 3 Salvador Dalí, Project for the ceiling of The Palace of the Wind, 1970. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres (detail)

THE LOVE OF ITALY AS THE BACKDROP TO THE CASTLE OF PÚBOL 32

the Pallavicini Palace in Rome that Dalí admired so much. 19 In decorating the ceiling of Púbol Castle, Dalí sought to please his queen and to make himself present there. As he himself wrote: ‘It was enough that I decorated the ceilings so that whenever she looks up she finds me in her heaven.’ 20 [Figs. 3, 4, 5 and 6]

Fig. 4 Salvador Dalí, The Palace of the Wind, 1970 73. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres (detail)

19 Dalí had held the press conference for his first retrospective in Italy in 1954 under the Casino dell'Aurora frescoes that he so much admired and chose to symbolise his Renaissance on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday.

20 Cit. supra, n. 12, p. 272.

Fig. 5 Salvador Dalí, Project for the ceiling of the Coats of Arms Room in Gala Dalí Castle in Púbol, c. 1970. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

GALA’S PÚBOL. ILLUSION AND REALITY 33

Under this Mediterranean sky, under this nocturnal vault, 21 is Gala, the lady of the castle, an ethereal, celestial being, suspended in a nebulous mass, like the character of Hymen in Shakespeare's As You Like It, 22 who comes down from a cloud to set the seal on the union of the four couples. This is Gala as the hostess welcoming her guests, but at the same time, by virtue of her position above the door, the guardian watching over her shelter and shielding it from prying eyes, reminding us that we are now entering to her private rooms. The rod she holds in her hand is a symbol of authority, a magic wand or a stick for playing ball, like that of the lady in the original Il

22 Cit. supra, n. 15.

Fig. 6 Salvador Dalí, Ceiling of the Coats of Arms Room in Gala Dalí Castle in Púbol, c. 1971. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres (detail)

THE LOVE OF ITALY AS THE BACKDROP TO THE CASTLE OF PÚBOL 34

21 Salvador Dalí, ‘Vogué : Numéro du cinquantenaire 1921/1972 réalisé par Salvador Dalí’, Vogue, Paris, No. 522, 1971/1972, p. 175.

23 Antonio D. Olano, ‘Dalí habla de Dalí’, Gaceta Ilustrada, Barcelona, year XIV, No. 685, 23/11/1969, p. 62.

Gioco della Palla (The Ball Game), one of the Ciclo dei Giochi frescoes in the Palazzo Borromeo in Milan, a decorative cycle showing members of the Borromeo family at play, their elaborate hairstyles and rich clothing visible testimony to their elevated social position. Dalí chose the same pose and the same dress for his Gala but changed the colour of the mantilla for a fiery red, which stands out strongly from her pale, full length pleated dress. [Figs. 7 and 8] This is a lady of a modern cast, bold and passionate. At the same time, she is romantic and mysterious, as is the castle, a place she can enjoy, where she can have time for herself when ‘there are too many people in Portlligat. She lives secretly, with flowers… Sometimes she invites me to go with her’. 23 Dalí’s words here invoke the game of courtly love and the idea that intimacy diminishes passion while distance increases

GALA’S PÚBOL. ILLUSION AND REALITY 35

Fig. 7 Salvador Dalí, Gala, c. 1970. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres

Fig. 8 Salvador Dalí, Project for the ceiling of the Coats of Arms Room in Gala Dalí Castle in Púbol, c.1970. Fundació Gala Salvador Dalí, Figueres (detail)

it. Dalí recalled, in Vogue, a visit the couple made to the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan during a trip to Italy. Gala, ecstatic at The Marriage of the Virgin by the divine Raphael whom they admired so much, let out a sigh and exclaimed: ‘What an honour never to meet any member of Raphael's family. Imagine the catastrophe of being introduced to Raphael's aunt, however distant she should be.’ 24

THE LOVE OF ITALY AS THE BACKDROP TO THE CASTLE OF PÚBOL 36

24 Cit. supra, n. 21.

June 2022

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