The idea is that while Dalí was the face of the enterprise, Gala propelled it. Dalí certainly recognised her contribution, signing some of his paintings “Gala Salvador Dalí” (which gave the exhibition its title). Can Gala, having produced no art that we know of, really be considered an artist? Perhaps not. But this exhibition does show how much Salvador Dalí – and his art – depended on her forceful personality, for better or worse. home, his house in Port Lligat was destroyed by the war. He was also greatly affected because his friend was executed in the war and his sister Ana Maria was imprisoned and tortured.

away to Paris, where they actually got married. Dali and Gala had hired an escort to take them safely to Paris, but the escort died on his return because of the stresses of the Spanish Civil War. When Dali had finally returned Salvador Dalí, “One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Provoked by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate” (1944)But it was love at first sight for the dynamic duo. Dalì declared that it was “mostly with your blood, Gala, that I paint my pictures.” Gala seemed to calm his anxieties and was his cerebral companion. https://www.salvador-dali.org/en/museums/dali-theatre-museum-in-figueres/the-collection/131/galatea-of-the-spheres The fact that I myself, at the moment of painting, do not understand my own pictures, does not mean that these pictures have no meaning,” Dalí once said. “On the contrary, their meaning is so profound, complex, coherent, and involuntary that it escapes the more simple analysis of logical intuition.”

Arguably the most unique feature of Dalí's body of work is that he only ever used one female model. More than a muse, Gala is nothing short of a motif in his art. But as the critic Nina Sophia Miralles points out, Gala's "work wasn't restricted to sitting still long enough to be immortalized in oil [she] acted as agent, dealer, promoter, and jailer; she channelled all her ruthlessness into her promotion of him".The Italian fashion designer and couturier (and great rival to Coco Chanel) Elsa Schiaparelli was one of the most prominent figures in fashion between the wars. She and Dalí were introduced by Man Ray around the mid-1930s in Paris and the pair started to collaborate, designing a perfume in the shape of a telephone dial, an actual telephone with a fake lobster as its receiver and the so-called Tears Dress based on Dalí's painting Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms Skins of an Orchestra (1936). In 1937 Schiaparelli produced the Shoe Hat which was made famous by Gala. The inspiration for the hat was based on her 1933 photograph of Dalí balancing her slippers on his head and shoulder. The hat was captured for posterity in a photograph by Georges Saad (published in the October 1937 " L'Officiel de la Mode et de la Couture") and Gala herself was shown modeling the hat in a photograph taken by André Maillet the following year. The visual centre of the painting directs us, not toward Gala's eyes (which are closed) but to her mouth. (He would have kissed this mouth many times and it was a mouth that would have soothed him with comforting words. Despite criticism levelled at her, she did prove to be a stabilising influence to Salvador.) From her mouth, flows a perfect procession of infinite spheres, being replicated like cells in living tissue.

They never touch each other, symbolizing the nuclear theory that Dali was aware of. Dali was particularly pleased with the depth of perspective he achieved in this picture according to his friend and fellow painter, Pitxot. Dali also created a sense of movement and pace in this piece, particularly through Galatea's flowing hair.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "this evocative portrait reveals the deeply intertwined personal and artistic lives of members of the Surrealist circle and depicts the movement's fascination with dreamlike states. [Ernst] painted this work based on Man Ray's photograph of [Gala] Éluard's eyes. With curious forms rising from her unfurling forehead, Éluard becomes an imagined embodiment of Surrealism's wide-eyed interest in art's power to explore the mysterious territories of the unconscious mind ". I ndeed, for the Surrealist the eyes were a window to the interior and thus took on almost mystical qualities. It is easy to see here how Gala's hypnotic stare - "the woman whose gaze piece walls" as Paul Éluard once described her - would have entranced the Surrealists who fell under her spell. The critic Nina Sophia Miralles wrote: "Dalí's imagination is often seen as a force of its own, but in reality, it was a fragile construct, unable to flourish without Gala, whom he used as a shield. Behind her, he would be safe to create; without her, he would be swept away. Dalí honored this coauthorship of his life. As early as the thirties [when this piece was produced] he began to sign his canvases with both their names even though she'd never so much as lifted a brush. 'It is mostly with your blood, Gala, that I paint my pictures', he told her". Dali made this piece in 1952, depicting his partner at the time Gala, however the two did not marry until 1958. This is a traditional painting in the fact that it is a portrait image of Gala despite that though it is definitely unconventional in the way that the face is formed as a result of these shapes coming together. This was made during Dali’s nuclear mysticism period where he was focused on the maths / science side of reality as well as the creative side. These two passions of his coincided to form this and a few other pieces from this period in his life. Dali developed an interest for the atomic bomb – the first one dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. This involved the splitting of atoms, releasing enough energy to cause a major catastrophe that is still devastating today. The spherical shapes in Dali’s painting resemble the atom splitting into the different particles. However the first hydrogen bomb was also tested in 1952, instead of the atom splitting, particles fused to become helium nuclei, again releasing copious amounts of energy. As we know that Dali had an interest in nuclear physics since the atomic bomb, it is possible that he created this piece to show the particles coming together to form Gala which would represent the massive impact she had on his life much like a bomb. In 1934 Dalí's painted Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops in Equilibrium Upon Her Shoulder in which his wife is shown against a surrealist landscape with her eyes closed and two lamb chops placed on her shoulders. This was one of the numerous portraits Dalí painted of Gala over his career though here Dalí's thinking is at its most oblique. McGirk's reading of the painting seems highly plausible, however, when he suggested it might have "represented his misplaced desire to cannibalise Gala "; that is, to be able to completely "consume" his wife. Certainly, Gala was exerting a hypnotic-like influence over her husband.

Dali was both, emotionally disturbed and an artistic genius. How endearing, that he cherished his wife (Gala) and made her the object of many artistic works. Simultaneously muse, model, artist, businesswoman, writer and fashion icon, Gala has long been treated as a cipher by art historians, but thanks to the new Barcelona exhibition, she is finally emerging as a singular individual connected with—but not dependent on—the male surrealists who surrounded her. In Still Life – Fast Moving, Dalí continues to explore mathematical theory by rendering it in his Nuclear Mysticism style. The artist chose to reinterpret the traditional still life painting by illustrating the objects in constant motion. Food, drinks, and tableware seem to spin around the scene in mid-air as if they’re in their own swirling vortex. Though many art critics and avant-gardists saw Gala's eagerness to court publicity and embrace the world of celebrity as calculated and vulgar, it was she who spotted the potential for this shy Spanish peasant boy to become the international face of Surrealism. Indeed, it was only through her tenacity and verve that the couple triumphed in America. As Miralles suggests, "without Gala, the great artist might never have been". Salvador Dali, "One Second Before Awakening From a Dream Provoked by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate," 1944This work marks the beginning of a move in focus both through artistic imagery and in Dalí's conversion to Catholicism. According McGirk, "slowly Dalí's mysticism took form, and the shape it assumed was Gala. He painted her as the Madonna of Port Lligat, in angelic levitation above the fishermen in their boats on the sea. There was no change in Gala's behaviour to warrant this idealization - she was still the prowling seductress of young men, the arrogant and ruthless keeper of Dalí. It was not as though Gala necessarily inspired his epiphany ". Dalí worshipped Gala – she was his muse and the love of his life. He painted her frequently, often in religious contexts, like Virgin Mary in The Madonna of Port Lligat. Galatea of the Spheres is one of the many portraits Dalí did of his wife, in this instance depicting her head and shoulders as fragmented into spheres that seem to float in space. Salvador Dalí – Galatea of the Spheres (1952), oil on canvas Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937) is from Dali's Paranoiac-critical period. Painted using oil on canvas, it contains one of Dali's famous double images. The double images were a Apparently Dalí wished for this painting to be displayed in the Dalí Theatre museum in Figueras, indeed it remains there til this day. This 1952 oil on canvas painting is a loving and honorable tribute to his wife and muse Gala, who often sat for him.