Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto DalĂ i DomĂšnech, 1Ëąá” Marquess of DalĂ de PĂșbol, was born in Figueres, Catalonia on the 11á”Ê° of May 1904. DalĂ's older brother, who had also been named Salvador (born 12á”Ê° October 1901), had died nine months earlier, on August 1903. DalĂ was haunted by the idea of his dead brother throughout his life, mythologizing him in his writings and art. DalĂ also had a sister who was three years younger. DalĂ's father, was a middle-class lawyer and notary, an anti-clerical atheist and Catalan federalist, whose strict disciplinary approach was tempered by his wife, who encouraged her son's artistic endeavors.
In 1922, DalĂ moved to Madrid and studied at San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts. There he became close friend with PepĂn Bello, Luis Buñuel, Federico GarcĂa Lorca, and others associated with the Madrid avant-garde group Ultra. The friendship with Lorca had a strong element of mutual passion, but DalĂ said he rejected the poet's sexual orientation. Lorca was killed by Spanish Nationalist militia on August 1936.
In the mid-1920s DalĂ grew a neatly trimmed moustache. In later decades he cultivated a more flamboyant one in the manner of 17th-century Spanish master painter Diego VelĂĄzquez, and this moustache became a well known DalĂ icon.
In April 1926 DalĂ made his first trip to Paris where he met Pablo Picasso, whom he revered. Picasso had already heard favorable reports about DalĂ from Joan MirĂł, a fellow Catalan who later introduced him to many Surrealist friends.
From 1927 DalĂ's work became increasingly influenced by Surrealism. Influenced by his reading of Freud, DalĂ increasingly introduced suggestive sexual imagery and symbolism into his work.
Elena Ivanovna Diakonova (Gala) was born in Kazan, Russia, on the 7á”Ê° of September 1894. Coming from a family of intellectuals, among her childhood friends was the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. Gala was the second of four children born to Ivan and Antonine Diakonoff. When Gala was ten years old her father disappeared prospecting gold in Siberia. This left the family, (her sister Lidia and her two brothers, Nikola and Vadim) destitute. According to the law of the Russian Orthodox Church, Galaâs mother could not remarry but Antonine defied normal practice by choosing to live with a wealthy lawyer.
Ill from tuberculosis, in 1912 she was sent to a sanatorium at Clavadel, near Davos in Switzerland. There she met Paul Ăluard and fell in love with him. They were both seventeen. In 1916, during World War I, she traveled from Russia to Paris to reunite with him; they were married one year later. Their daughter, CĂ©cile, was born in 1918. Gala detested motherhood, mistreating and ignoring her child.
Gala was an inspiration for many artists including Ăluard, Louis Aragon, Max Ernst, and AndrĂ© Breton. Breton later despised her, claiming she was a destructive influence on the artists she befriended. Gala, Ăluard, and Ernst spent three years in a mĂ©nage Ă trois, from 1924 to 1927.
In early August 1929, Ăluard and Gala visited Salvador DalĂ in Costa Brava, Spain. An affair quickly developed between Gala and DalĂ, who was about ten years younger than Gala. It was a love at first sight. In his Secret Life, DalĂ wrote:
«She was destined to be my Gradiva, the one who moves forward, my victory, my wife».
The name Gradiva comes from the title of a novel by W. Jensen, the main character of which was Sigmund Freud. Gradiva was the bookâs heroine and it was her who brought psychological healing to the main character.
After living together since 1929, DalĂ and Gala married in a civil ceremony in 1934, and remarried in a Catholic ceremony in 1958 in the Pyrenean hamlet of Montrejic. They needed to receive a special dispensation by the Pope because Gala had been previously married and she was a believer (not Catholic â but was an Orthodox Christian âŠïž). Due to his purported phobia of female genitalia, DalĂ was said to have been a virgin when they met in 1929. Around that time Gala was found to have uterine fibroids, for which she underwent a hysterectomy in 1936.
The start of their cohabitation was much of a challenge. DalĂ was then far from being a top-earning artist, and Gala had no income of her own. In the early 1930s, DalĂ started to sign his paintings with his and her name. He stated that Gala acted as his agent, and aided in redirecting his focus. To top it all, there was a public outcry about the inscription DalĂ had made on one of his pictures: âSometimes I spit with pleasure on the portrait of my mother.' This made his father shun connection with the son and cut off his allowance. And many in the neighbourhood did side the notary of so high a reputation, and refused Salvador residence or tenancy. Only a fishermanâs widow, some Lidia Sabana de Costa, who had known him since his childhood, and always believed in his talent, â only she sold the couple for a song a solitary shack off CadaquĂ©s, in Port Lligat, used for storing fishing tackle. And Salvador and Galaâs love made the shack a castle.
The room of sixteen square metres in area was the front parlour, the bedroom, and the studio â all in one. For lunch, they sometimes had one fruit for the two of them. This period of her and DalĂ's living below the breadline hardly fits the popular idea of Gala as an avaricious, money-minded woman, though, when with Paul Ăluard, she had had a far better-off lifestyle in well-furnished Parisian apartments. n that period, the peak of their success was DalĂ's solo exhibition held in June, 1931, in the Pierre Colle Gallery.
During 1937 Gala assumed more power in the position of DalĂâs business manager and agent and procurer of artistic contracts. They travelled widely in the United States during the eight years spent there in exile, with winters spent conducting business at the St Regis Hotel in New York, summers in California. In 1948 the pair returned to Europe. Upon returning to Spain, From this date they would spend summers in Spain in Port Lligat and winters in New York or Paris.
Gala had a strong libido and throughout her life had numerous extramarital affairs, which DalĂ encouraged, since he was a practitioner of candaulism.
In the end of the sixties their relationships started to fade away, and the rest of their life it was just smouldering pieces of their bygone passion. In 1968, DalĂ bought Gala the Castle of PĂșbol, Girona, where she would spend time every summer from 1971 to 1980. He also agreed not to visit there without getting advance permission from her in writing.
In 1980, at the age of 76, Dali was forced to retire due to palsy. The motor disorder left him unable to hold a brush, and as his condition worsened, he became less tolerant of Galaâs continued affairs. Gala was also using the income from Daliâs art to lavish money and gifts on her lovers, who were mostly young male artists. One day, the artist had enough. He beat Gala so badly, he broke two of her ribs.
In her late seventies, Gala had a relationship with millionaire multi-platinum rock singer Jeff Fenholt, former lead vocalist of Jesus Christ Superstar.
Gala died the 10 of June 1982, at the age of 87 after suffering from a severe case of influenza. She was interred in the Castle of PĂșbol, in a crypt with a chessboard style pattern.
In 1982, King Juan Carlos I bestowed on DalĂ the title of  Marquess of DalĂ of PĂșbol in the nobility of Spain, PĂșbol being where DalĂ then lived.
DalĂ died of heart failure on the 23 of January at the age of 84.
Gala and DalĂ lived together for 53 years.
