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Dali Galatea of the Spheres 60 x 80 cm art print

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This 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 ". There’s no evidence that Gala actually shared her husband’s paint brush (although she did contribute to his 1942 autobiography and other written works), but as the museum notes, she was very much the joint author of Salvador’s oeuvre: “It was she who chose the image with which she wanted to present and, especially, represent herself. It is possible to design one’s own self-portrait without producing a tangible pictorial work.” 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.

It was during this period that Gala and Dalí first made the acquaintance of the fashion designer Christian Dior. Gala was becoming instrumental in raising her husband's profile in Paris and between 1931 and 1933 she helped her husband exhibit in Pierre Colle's small gallery which was part owned by Dior. By now Gala had devoted herself completely to Dalí and his career. She divorced Éluard in 1932 and become Mrs. Gala Dalí in a civil ceremony in 1934. She also abandoned her daughter completely, leaving her in the sole care of Éluard. The newlyweds became co-dependents and she even allowed herself to be dressed by her husband. Gala also participated in his Surrealist performances including their "rebirth as a couple" from a giant egg. Not everyone was happy about this relationship, however. Dalí's father and sister disowned him and while he was reconciled with his father in later years, his sister never accepted their relationship.According to a press release, Gala Salvador Dali relies on a selection of letters, postcards, books and clothing derived from Púbol, as well as 60 of Salvador’s paintings and works by fellow surrealists Max Ernst, Man Ray and Cecil Beaton. Armed with 315 artifacts linked with the enigmatic figure’s life, curator Estrella de Diego set out to answer the following questions: “Who was this woman whom everybody noticed…Was she simply an inspiring muse for artists and poets? Or, despite having few signed pieces … was she more of a creator?” Gruesome, bizarre, and excruciatingly meticulous in technique, Salvador Dali's paintings rank among the most compelling portrayals of the unconscious mind. Dali described this convulsively arresting picture as "a vast human body 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. Dalí made hundreds of drawings and paintings of Gala. That he worshipped her is clear. He was sexually fascinated by her but, by his own account, was afraid of sex (he was allegedly a virgin when he met Gala). So he tolerated, and perhaps even encouraged, her affairs. Ian Gibson, Dalí’s biographer, has argued that he was pathologically timid and developed an exhibitionist persona as a protective device. Gala Salvador Dalí: A Room of One’s Own in Púbol, a new exhibition at the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya in Barcelona, derives its name from Virginia Woolf’s similarly titled 1929 essay, which proclaims that “a woman must have money and a room of her own” to create.

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. We get the impression of motion and speed with some spheres, consistent with the evident speed of real objects, orbiting in outer space and inside the atom.Salvador Dalí, “One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Provoked by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate” (1944) 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.

breaking out into monstrous excrescences of arms and legs tearing at one another in a delirium of autostrangulation." The desecration of the human body was a great preoccupation of the Surrealists in general, and of Dali in particular. before any mental revolutions. Dali put forth his "Paranoic-Critical method" as an alternative to having to politically conquer the world. He felt that his own vision could be imposed on and color the The fragmentation indicates Dalí’s fascination at the time with nuclear physics and the revelation that matter was made up of atoms. He explored these concepts (usually coupled with religion) in many of his paintings, declaring those years his nuclear mysticismperiod. In his Anti-Matter Manifesto, Dalí explained this new approach to art: 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. Galatea of the Spheres is a wonderful piece. Suspended spheres, depicting the atomic particles, orbit around and also create the face of "Galatea" who is a sea nymph in classical mythology. Her eyes are closed and the viewer is drawn to her mouth where the spheres appear to originate.

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Dalí fed the idea that he and Gala collaborated with each other, but there’s no evidence that Gala ever told Dalí what to paint. In the male-dominated Surrealist movement, though, Gala more than held her ground. A photo shows her playing chess with the Surrealists, the only female in view. She and Dalí were only too happy to be photographed together: the exhibitionism of their “private” life was itself a kind of performance art. On that project, at least, they worked as equals. One of the most representative works from the nuclear mysticism period. It is the outcome of a Dali impassioned by science and for the theories of the disintegration of the atom. Gala's face In reality, both the smallest and largest aspects of the visible creation are designed along similar principles. This is most apparent in the organisation of atomic particles and galaxies. Both of their structures involve spheres, maintaining precise orbits and spatial distribution. It is almost as if an atom contains its own miniature universe. Dalí i Domènech, Salvador Galatea of the Spheres Date 1952 Technique Oil on canvas Dimensions 65 x 54 cm Location Dalí Theatre-Museum

Sometimes, a little boy appears in Dalí’s paintings. In “The Spectre of Sex Appeal”, the boy looks at a hideous, propped-up assemblage of festering flesh. And here he is again, in an image where Gala basks happily in the sun, a pair of lamb chops on her shoulder. In his book “The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí”, published in 1942, Dalí satirised people’s attempts to read the painting. “The meaning of this, as I later learned, was that instead of eating her, I had decided to eat a pair of raw chops…The chops were in effect the expiatory victims of an abortive sacrifice – like Abraham’s ram, and William Tell’s apple.” In response, she medicated Dalì with Valium, which made him lethargic, and with amphetamines, which woke him up. The latter gave Dalì“irreversible neural damage.” There’s speculation that Gala attempted to poison him.The structure of DNA fascinated Dalí and like all enquiring minds, he set to work implementing it in his art; he created this artwork during his ‘nuclear mysticism’ period’. It is in effect an abstract portrait of his wife, Gala, her face is visible, created from disconnected spheres, the axis of the canvas disappearing in the distance creating the illusion of three dimensions. The three dimensional holographic image, represents a mix of renaissance art and atomic theory, the artists interest in nuclear physics began around 1945 when the first atomic bomb hit Hiroshima in 1945. Galatea of the spheresis a piece Dali created depicting his wife Gala Dali within a series of spheres. During this time Dali had been experimenting with scientific theories and his own passion for the sciences. Inspired by Heisenberg, and thinking ‘ today, the exterior world —the physical one— has gone beyond the psychological one ‘– shows how much deeper into reality Dali was thinking than just what was on the surface. I will be exploring this piece of art as a whole but also trying to piece together the underlying concepts. 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. In this painting, Dalí depicts Gala as a bust portrait broken down into round spheres of color. Surrealist in style, when the spheres are viewed as a whole, the image of his wife becomes clear. Gala seems to float unanchored in a blue sky above a body of water. Dalí's fragmenting of this image, marks an interesting development in his work and displays his growing fascination with nuclear physics and the idea (a revelation to Dalí) that matter was made up of atoms. Dalí investigated these ideas, though never at the expense of his religious beliefs, in several paintings. He referred to works produced during this time as his "nuclear mysticism" period . 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.

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