Essay About Salvador Dali And Dalis Life

Salvador Dali
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Salvador Dali
precise and detailed painful reality and, placed them inside somber and depressing
landscapes as in The persistence of Memory in 1931 (Smith, 2002, 1/1).
His paintings showed a surrealist maturity since he was twenty. From 1926 to 1929,
Dali begun making objects loaded with modern sexual symbols. For example, showing a
dirty figure filled with excrement as in The Lugubrious Game done in 1929. At this
period, surrealists were very attracted to Salvador Dali because of his strong personality
and his violent works and paintings full of sexual and excrements allusions (Neret, 2000,
p.21).
The trompe-loeuil photographs, by Salvador Dali, took surrealist paintings to another
level by using techniques never used before. These paintings are filled with unusual
shapes, double-sided figures and, anamorphosis, that are distorted images that could be
well understood only if seen from a certain angle. They made him “a quarter century in
advance, the patron saint of American photo-realists” (Nйret, 2000, p.27). They were
used to transcribe the image of Dalis dreams. This was a revelation in his surrealist
paintings mainly caused by a very special person in Dalis life called Gala.
As a person, Salvador Dali was very special and had a revelation in his life by meeting
Helena Diakonoff or Gala. It all begun by a visit of Andre Breton, Louis Aragon and,
Paul Eluard to Dali. They were three masterminds of the surrealism movement. At this
time, Gala was Paul Eluards wife and the minute she entered Salvadors home
everything changed in his life. She was for Dali, “the woman of his childhood dream”
(qtd. in Nйrets book, 2000, p.21). She was all the women he represented in his
paintings before meeting her. Dali announced that “the small of her back was extremely
Salvador Dali 6
feminine and pronounced [] and, the energetic leanness of her torso, her delicate
buttocks and, the slenderness of her waist enhanced and rendered greatly more
desirable” (qtd. in Nйrets book, 2000, p.22).
Dali had extremely intense feelings towards Gala. Every time he started talking to her,
he burst into insane laughter and when she used to leave, Dali fell to the ground. He
believed that his love to Gala was perpetual and he declared that “she was destined to be
my Gradiva, my victory, my wife” (qtd. in Nйret, 2000, p.24). He never felt that happy in
his life and stated that “the idea that in my own room where I was going to work there
might be a women, […], suddenly struck me as so seductive that it was difficult for me to
believe this could be realized” (qtd. in Nйret, 2000, p.36).
Once, Dali asked Gala what does she want him to do. At that time, he had just read
Jensens novel, Gradiva, in which the heroine succeeds in healing the male protagonist
psychologically. She said she wants him to kill her. He then noted “one of the lightning
ideas that flashed into my mind was to throw Gala from the top of the bell-tower” (qtd. in
Nйret, 2000, p.26). But, right then, Dali realized that Gala weaned his crime and cured
him, because he had reached the great trial of his life, “the trial of love” (Ion,1994,p.36).
At this point, he was healed from his hysterical symptoms and was back to life again after
Galas psychological help. He claimed, “I became master again of my laughter,