Salvador Dalí portrayed by Roger Higgins in 1965
The well-known Dalinian triangle is a journey through the three key points in the life of the genius in the province of Girona. Its vertices are the house of Portlligat, in Cadaqués , a place where Salvador and his wife, Gala, would experience their love, create and lead a social life based on idolatry and bombastic display. The second, the theater-museum of Figueres it is the pure heritage of the artist. Designed by Salvador himself, in this space Dalí plays, misleads and opens the drawers of his craziest facet. Lastly, the Pubol Castle , place of Gala 100%, where she would spend long periods, she would give herself an anti-surrealist break, she would star in Vogue reports and even receive certain male visits to Salvador's dislike.
In total, these are certain brushstrokes of a madness made a product, of an art trend turned into a show that we continue to enjoy today, without caring about the egomania and peculiarities of its protagonist.
Gala
His first and most complex obsession. In every corner of her life there is a painting, a photograph or an object that reminds Elena Ivanovna and keeps her present. Even in the Theatre-Museum, the bushes in the interior garden grow in the shape of a G. More than love, even infantile fanaticism.
Dissected animals
There, suddenly, as soon as you enter. Both at her house in Portlligat and at the castle in Púbol, she is welcomed by a stuffed creature. In the first, a bear full of beads. In the second, a powerful horse. Conclusion: Dalí hated animals or rather had a passion for taxidermy. Yes indeed, always kitsch, always quirky.
Gala, more than his muse, an obsession
Millet's Angelus
In the studio of his house there are not only two windows that open onto the cliffs of the Costa Brava, but also a couple of reproductions of the work that most influenced his production. From here you can understand the fascination of him and the complex interpretations of him.
Michelin doll
Salvador always wanted to have designed this icon, that's why he reproduces it in different spaces of his house since he considered it almost perfect.
phallic pool
His swimming pool in Portlligat (that there is no Mediterranean house without it) is phallic in shape and is surrounded by sofa-lips and other pop icons such as the Pirelli logo. Here he received the hordes of fans and journalists who wanted to meet him. And always with shawls and extravagant appearance, always engulfed by his character.
Phone booth
Legend has it (almost) that one day Dalí became infatuated with a booth that was being placed in the street, he put it in the car and placed it in the courtyard of Portlligat. Pop Art or a simple prank?
Pichot's Piano
The first contact with the most bizarre bohemia would be in his youth, when his father's friend Ramón Pichot gave the young Salvador rides in a boat where he would get on his grand piano and play before the astonished gaze of the residents of Cadaqués. What remains of the old instrument rests in the dovecote of his house in Portlligat, a place where the most voyeur Dalí invited women to climb to the roof, from where he discovered what was under the skirts through a glass .
Christ of the Rubble
The remains of a flood inspired Salvador to create one of his most surprising works in the Portlligat garden. Nothing more and nothing less than a Christ formed with remains of tiles and wood. Recycled art in Dalí? One more example of his versatility.
The Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres
room of secrets
In the Portlligat house, Gala demanded to have a room of secrets inspired by the one in the Alhambra. A Kitsch corner where you can enjoy the silence and the whisper because Gala, above all, got angry without shouting. That's where it hurts the most.
Eggs
Dalí's decorative element par excellence crowns both the museum theater and his house. For him, the egg is love, hope, preuterine life and even an everlasting memory that he is the copy of his dead brother (of the same name and who died 9 months before he was born). Within these elements he would be happy.
Ghostly figures with bread for a hat
The facade of the Theater-Museum is dominated by ghostly figures, supported by crutches in which the passage of time and the years make a dent and disfigure. Empty, with hardly any faces, they are nothing more than Dalí's memory of the war mutilates who went down to the dance on Sunday afternoons from the Castle of San Fernando. Of course, the figure of the crown bread as a figure of life in hope for these characters.
The golden man and his balcony for rejoicing
Another of the curious elements of said façade is the presence of figures similar to the Oscars. Golden statues that represent the artist himself as a genius among his countrymen. His ego was very bulging and he fed it by spending hours in a small viewpoint from where he observed the long queues made by tourists to access his Theater-Museum.
Dali's egg in Port Lligat, Catalonia
Drawers
And then there are the drawers that open the soul of the human being and take it out. Drawers in the Venus of drawers and even in the artist himself. The mural in which he appears ascending to the heavens with Gala is nothing more than an excuse to show that his abdomen is an open closet with drawers from which he pours out all his essence. A full-fledged "this is all I am, folks."
America is Coca Cola. Advertising.
Strolling through the Theater-Museum is to find optical illusions, minor paintings and the occasional masterpiece. But also come face to face with the genius of the artist. And not only because of his aesthetic finesse and his surrealism, but also because he conceived advertising and contemporary icons as a powerful reflection of a society. Thus, in Poesía de América, Dalí represented the United States with a Coca Cola. Suck on that, Warhol.
Rhinos, spirals and atoms
The explanation for this famous scene, which has already become a cliché about this artist, is that Dalí considered that perfection could only be represented with the spiral of a conch shell, with the horn of a rhinoceros or with atoms. For this reason, walking through his house or through the theater-museum, it is not surprising to find snails, antlers and scientific paintings.
Mae West's (entire) apartment
The queues to access and see Mae West's face in her apartment (the work of Dalí) always tend to elude the most fun: here it is not enough to see her face, you have to find her shower and her bedroom . So far the tracks.
Dalí's Venus at the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres
Cadillacs
“An artist is good when he can buy a car. He is a genius when you can buy a Cadillac”, this phrase sums up Salvador's passion for these cars. He was amazed by the cache they gave, their enormous size and how extravagant it was on the roads of the Costa Brava. He dedicated a preferred sculpture to this vehicle in the Theatre-Museum and raised large sculptures to its logo in the garden of Púbol Castle. Precisely in the garage of this property, Salvador's own car rests, a vehicle that is not only surprising for its size, but also for being registered in Monaco.
The Castle in Tuscany
The castle of Púbol is the closest thing to a castle in Tuscany that Salvador found around. He discovered it flying over the area in a helicopter... And since Gala had been won over by the promise of a villa in Italy, he had no choice but to fit her out and give her this old medieval complex. It wasn't Tuscan land, but at least it was a castle.
immortelles
The quintessential flower of this singular couple is the immortelle, a rather bland, very fragrant and resistant species for which vases and pots were reserved in all parts of both the house and the castle.
tuned tapestries
Dalí could do little in Púbol. It was Gala's house and as such she was in charge of decorating it. But he was able to get his hands on some elements such as the worn tapestries that hung on the walls. To these, Salvador added figures with garish colors and completely decontextualized within the bland themes of each work. He couldn't be still.
Salvador Dali
I hate radiators!
Gala hated radiators. He covered them as best he could and hid them with trim and other furniture. The least liked part of his castle in Púbol was a small room populated by these heaters separated by a door. Gala asked her husband to draw something pretty on it. Dalí painted a couple of radiators in a hyper-realistic way.
lions fountain
The symbol of the Alhambra is another of the recurring motifs for the decoration of the Dalí universe. In her house, he elevates her to the role of a Spaniard, with colorful bullfighters in her windows. In Púbol he directly reproduces it among the undergrowth in the garden, the only space in the entire castle in which he was able to create with some freedom.
separate graves
But, at the end of it all, there is sorrow. Sad to see how these two lovers rest apart. She, in the crypt of Púbol. He, in the mausoleum of the Theater-Museum. They say that it was a mayor of Figueres who claimed that Salvador had asked him to sleep there forever, but the fact that in Púbol there is a tomb next to Gala's, respecting Dalí's taste for always sleeping to the right of his beloved It gives food for thought and incites doubt. If there was love in life, why deny it in death?
*This article was initially published on 04/23/2013 and updated on 01/23/2017 with new images