Under the shadow of shame.
Personal life of Salvador Dali
The Witches of Liers
Dali's paternal ancestors were from Liers — a small town in the north east of Spain.
They say that once it was teeming with witches, and therefore the city was waiting for a sad fate: many times wars demolished it to the ground.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, one of the Hungarian Dalis moved to Cadaques, a border Spanish village on the coast, separated from the rest of the world by mountains.
The artist's great grandfather Salvador and his grandfather Gal were born in Cadaquez.
Everyone who lived in Cadaques was "touched" from childhood, as Dali wrote, by the tramontana — a terrible north wind that develops speeds of up to 130 km per hour, which blows from the mountains for several days every year, overturning cars, uprooting plants and driving the inhabitants of the Emporda Valley into a black depression.
Grandfather Gal did not tolerate tramontana well and moved to live in Figueres.
But the black wind caught up with him here: on April 16, 1886, he went out on the balcony and jumped down.
Gal was 36.
The fact of suicide was carefully hidden from the public, as well as from younger family members.
Gal's paranoia was also transmitted to other family members — his son Raphael and partly to the artist himself.
Gal's second son, Salvador Dali Cuzi, studied to become a notary and moved to Figueres.
Soon he married Felipe Domenech, a girl from a creative family.
The first child of Salvador and Felipa was born on October 12, 1901.
Salvador Galo died of a stomach disease in a year and 10 months.
9 months and ten days after his death on May 11, 1904 another Salvador was born, christened Salvador Felipe Jacinto - not in honor of the deceased baby, but according to family tradition.
Salvador grew up a very spoiled child.
Parents, blaming themselves for the death of the first son, allowed the second everything.
In one of the books, Dali wrote: in order to enjoy the general concern about his health and digestion, he laid out his poop around the house in the most unexpected places.
And at the age of 8, he specially peed in bed so that his father would buy him a red tricycle.
Every morning, as soon as he opened his eyes, Salvador heard from his mother: "Honey, what do you want?"
My sister remembers that one day he wanted a beautifully braided braid of garlic, displayed in the window of a closed store.
The boy threw a real tantrum on the street and infuriated his meek mother.
Otherwise, his communication with other people was built.
From scraps of documents and memories of Dali's childhood, we see a very suggestible, dreamy, timid and hopelessly impractical child, inexplicably confusing fantasy and reality.
Dali's feelings were greatly influenced by his father's behavior.
He admired him, strong and quick tempered, and the more terrible was the disappointment that his son once had to experience.
One day on a weekend, when the whole family was looking forward to the return of Dali Kuzi, he was late.
Finally, the taxi drove up to the house, the wife and children went out into the street...
The pillar of the Figueres society got out of the car and loudly announced the reason for his lateness: "I shit myself."
Dali experienced a severe attack of shame for his father and remembered this shock until the end of his life.
Another time, a notary, dressed in pajamas, grappled with a tenant in front of him, and during the fight his penis fell out of his pants, "like a sausage"...
Relations with his own sexuality have been difficult for Dali all his life.
He became the only artist who made masturbation the main theme of his work.
The young man suffered from a full set of sexual complexes - from concern about the size of his penis to the fear of entering into a relationship with a woman (here an important role was played by an illustrated book about venereal diseases, which his father left open on the piano for educational purposes) and fears that he was impotent and a hidden homosexual.
Masturbation has been the only way for him to achieve sexual satisfaction all his life.
In his youth, Dali was dazzlingly beautiful: above average height, blue eyed, stylishly dressed.
He liked to make an effect on the audience, and he grew his hair and sideburns, and wore a raincoat casually over his shoulder.
The girls liked Dali.
His best friend was the beautiful Carme Roger Pumerola, the daughter of the owner of the cafe.
They took art lessons together, went to the movies...
The death of his mother was a shock for 16 year old Dali.
He swore that he would resurrect her in a ray of his own glory.
But he himself could not imagine that in some eight years he would write on his painting: "Sometimes I spit with pleasure on the portrait of my mother..."
"Passing by, he smiled at me and left a star in my heart..."
Salvador showed a talent for painting in his early childhood.
By the time he graduated from high school, he had already successfully exhibited his paintings several times in Figueres and Barcelona.
His father, proud of his achievements, decided that his son would study in Madrid.
In September 1922, Salvador settled in the Madrid Residence of Students, the leading "student town" of Spain.
In the first weeks, he did not communicate much with other residents of the Residence because of his terrible shyness.
But soon he also had friends.
Among them is the future director Luis Bunuel from Aragon, who tried to study alternately at several faculties, an amateur athlete and a born rebel.
Together they explored the nooks and crannies of Madrid at night and visited intellectual companies in numerous cafes.
From the first days of his stay in the Residence, Dali heard stories about the brightest resident of it, who was at home in Andalusia at that time.
Federico Garcia Lorca, 6 years older than Dali, was born in a village near Granada.
By the time they met, he had already published his first book.
Lorca played the piano perfectly, sang, was an excellent storyteller, drew. .
At first glance, he could charm the interlocutor.
However, the poet was shunned by those who knew about his "lack": Lorca was a homosexual — a fact that even now his few surviving friends refuse to accept.
At the beginning of 1923, Lorca arrived at the Residence.
They had a lot in common with Dali: a love for poetry and France (both were Germanophobes), for Spanish folk songs that were sung to them since childhood; concern about the injustice of the world; problems with their own sexuality.
It was a "great friendship," as Dali wrote, which gradually grew into something more.
Dali resisted as much as he could the idea that he was similar to Lorca in his sexual preferences, and was afraid that he might succumb to his secret desires.
Since the early 20s, the image of Lorca appears in all Dali's paintings, displacing his first "nature" - his sister.
Their heads touch as if in a kiss...
During the Easter holidays of 1925, Dali invited Lorca to Cadaques.
Breakfast after their arrival was served on the terrace in the shade of eucalyptus trees.
"When we moved on to dessert, we were already good friends, as if we had known each other all our lives," writes Ana Maria.
She was 17, she fell in love with Lorca.
Dali's father also accepted the poet as a native and even arranged a performance of sardana, a Catalan folk dance, in his honor.
Neither Ana Maria nor her father could even guess how the relationship between Federico and Salvador was developing.
In May 1926, after the publication of "Ode to Salvador Dali", which shocked the artist, Lorca tried to seduce him.
However, Dali was adamant.
"I was very excited.
And somewhere in the depths of my soul I told myself that he was a great poet and that I should give him a little of the divine Dali."
But this did not happen.
Dali's aversion to female genitals and the "jungle of blood" (a metaphor for sexual intercourse, invented by the poet) was as strong as Lorca's, and remained so for the rest of his life.
Dali liked women's breasts of small sizes (he was afraid of large busts), and most of all he loved the buttocks in women.
Later, Lorca once again tried to make Dali his lover.
And then he wrote: "I behaved like an indecent ass, with you — the best thing I have.
Every minute I understand this more clearly and I regret everything very much."
Bunuel was alarmed by the growing intimacy of Lorca and Dali's relationship.
He wrote to his friend Pepin Bello: "Dishonest Garcia!
We must free Salvador from his influence.
Because Dali is a real man and very talented."
Outside intervention was not required, the two geniuses were separated by circumstances.
However, they continued to correspond and met whenever possible.
In the autumn of 1935, Dali saw Lorca in Barcelona.
The poet was so happy with the meeting that he committed an atypical act: he left Dali for Tarragona without warning the audience who had gathered for a concert in his honor.
In an interview, Lorca said: "We are spiritual twins.
Here's the proof: we havenot seen each other for seven years, but our opinions about everything coincide, as if we didnot stop talking.
Dali is a genius, a genius!"
They did not see each other again.
After hearing about Lorca's execution, Dali could not believe it for a long time.
And then he exclaimed "Ole!" — the way Spaniards at a bullfight express their admiration for the bullfighter's pass...
Until his death, Lorca remained for Dali the main person of his life — after Gala.
"Her forehead is like her thighs, her thighs are like her gums..."
Dali met another great poet, Paul Eluard, at a party in Paris in April 1929.
The poet's wife was then in Switzerland.
Dali heard that she is a special woman...
Bunuel was supposed to come to Dali in Cadaques this summer.
At the beginning of August, he arrived there, as promised, accompanied by the Magrittes, the art critic Homan and his girlfriend, and Paul Eluard with his wife and daughter Cecile.
According to local newspapers, representatives of the Parisian bohemians " arrived with their respected families."
The representative of the" respected family " who appeared before Dali on the beach in a swimsuit, struck the artist.
It was the same girl he had seen in the stereoscope pictures as a child against the background of Russian snows and domes, in a sled, with piercing eyes...
The figure of Eluard's wife was the epitome of Dali's ideal: perfectly shaped hips and legs,small breasts and a wasp waist.
And all this was surrounded by her favorite seascapes, and she had a name, almost like Dali's grandfather, - Gala.
She walked along the sand with a springy gait: people looked back after her...
Gala's face was hardly beautiful, but when she wanted to charm someone, she even became pretty.
However, in a bad mood (which happened to her often) with her long nose and close set eyes, she looked like a bird of prey or a rat.
Elena Diakonova Devulina (she was called a tick at home) was born in Kazan on August 26, 1894 and was 10 years older than Dali.
Little is known about Gala's childhood.
His father, Ivan, was a Moscow employee, and his mother, Antonina, a cultured woman who moved in artistic circles, published collections of children's stories.
Elena studied French from the age of 7 and after all her life communicated with Dali in French (the artist himself spoke a monstrous mixture of French, Spanish and Catalan).
At the age of 10, she lost her father, and four children, the eldest Nikolai and Vadim and the younger sister Lydia, were raised by her mother and stepfather.
Gala grew up sickly, and in 1912 she was sent to a Swiss sanatorium for the prevention of tuberculosis.
There she spent two years, having met the young poet Eugene Grindel (real name of Paul Eluard).
Both returned home, corresponded, and in 1916 Gala went to Eluard in France — as a bride.
Gala's letters sent to Eluard at the front have been preserved.
These are passionate messages, despite the fact that both Gala and Paul were virgins then.
But her innocence before the marriage, concluded at the age of 23, Gala more than compensated for the subsequent debauchery.
The Eluars led a free lifestyle, throwing their only unwanted daughter, Cecile, to be raised by her grandmother.
The sexual appetite of Eluard's wife bordered on nymphomania.
After the threesome orgies with the artist Max Ernst, Gala openly regretted that "some anatomical features" did not allow her to make love at the same time with two partners.
All of Gala's lovers were handsome she hated the ugly.
And, of course, I immediately drew attention to the attractive and talented Dali.
Especially since the financial affairs of the Eluars had been shaken by that time, and the childhood fears of poverty returned to her soul.
Since the time of Carme Roger, no girl has attracted Dali's attention.
It was as if he had gone mad when he met Gala.
Bunuel saw everything.
"Dali changed overnight."
The summer ended, the guests left Kadakes, but Gala and her daughter stayed.
The great quarrel between Dali and his family began.
At that time, in Catalonia, walking with a French woman meant walking with a prostitute.
And Gala was also so attractive, married and of Russian origin.
Don Salvador called his son's passion "la madame".
Almost immediately, he changed his will in favor of Ana Maria, who also treated Gala with hostility.
But it was not dislike for Gala that became the main reason for Dali's break with his father and sister.
At the end of November, an exhibition opened in Paris, where among the works of Dali was the painting "Sacred Heart".
In ink on the canvas, he wrote: "Sometimes I enjoy spitting on the portrait of my mother."
Many years later, Dali assured us that he had no intention of offending the memory of Dona Felipa, that he simply wrote at the dictation of his subconscious, which sometimes tells us in dreams how we torment loved ones.
Don Salvador cursed his son and threw him out of the house.
He believed that Gala was largely to blame, supplying Dali with money and drugs.
However, this was not the case.
The exhibition was a financial success, and it was Dali who became a source of confidence in the future for Gala.
Despite their father's curses and threats, the couple bought a small house in the fishing town of Port Lligat near Cadaques.
They moved in together.
Eluard bombarded Gala with letters and telegrams, trying to get her back.
Lorca was amazed to learn that Dali had found the woman of his dreams.
"This is impossible!
He gets an erection only when someone puts a finger in his ass! "
he told his friend the poet Raphael Alberti.
Lorca knew Dali — but he did not know Gala...
When the poet met her during the last meeting with Dali, he was no less fascinated than his friend, delighted that this woman not only seduced Dali, but also managed to keep him.
Gala helped Dali to free himself from the thoughts that tormented him about his sexual inferiority.
It did not save Dali from masturbation, but it significantly eased the feeling of shame, from the power of which Dali could not escape until the end of his life.
Gala became Dali's religion, his talisman, his love and curse.
In 1931, he dedicated his poem "Love and Memory"to her:
...Away from the image of my sister
Gala
Her eyes are like her anus
Her knees are like her ears...
Her buttocks are like the finger of her hand
The finger of her hand is like her voice
Her voice is like her toe
Her toe looks like the hair of her armpits
The hair of her armpits is similar to her forehead
Her forehead is like her thighs
Her thighs are like her gums
Her gums are like her hair
Her hair looks like her legs...
Dali and Gala were married on January 30, 1934.
Eluard was not present at the ceremony — it would have been too much for the person who wrote: "I love you so much that I donot know which of us is not here anymore..."
The couple had no children.
When Reynolds Morse, a friend and collector of Dali's paintings, asked him why, the artist replied: it's scary to imagine what they could be.
"One of Picasso's sons is running around Paris half naked and half mad.
If the genius of Picasso has such a crazy son, imagine who would have been born to me!"
In fact, after undergoing gynecological surgery, Gala could no longer become a mother.
And Dali even liked that his wife was "sterile".
Girlfriends, androgynes and lovers
In the autumn of 1935, Dali and Gala made their first voyage to America, which met the author of "The Great Masturbator", "The Dark Game" and "The Constancy of Memory" with delight.
His name graced the front pages of newspapers.
World fame and fortune were already around the corner...
At this time, the first attempts of Salvador to reconcile with his father belong to this time.
Gradually, their relationship improved, and eventually Dali Kuzi even recognized the role of the witch wife in his son's life: "Without Gala, he would have ended up under the Paris bridge."
But the artist never really reconciled with his sister.
And after in 1949 she published a memoir about the childhood of Salvador Dali, distorting, in his opinion, many facts and blaming surrealism and Gala for all family misfortunes, he permanently deleted Ana Maria from his heart.
"This old lesbian" — otherwise Dali did not call her.
In America, where Dali and Gala settled for eight years since 1940, Dali came up with the idea of using his name to make money: there were perfumes, stockings, ties with fragments of his paintings.
Avida Dollars (greedy for dollars) — this anagram from the name of Dali was invented by the father of surrealism, Breton, and the artist liked it very much.
The endless replication of lips, liquid watches and "great masturbators" began...
Ten years later, Dali's wealth grew significantly.
Gala illegally exported suitcases of currency from America.
On the advice of his manager Peter Moore, Dali begins to sign blank sheets with his name, so that after the merchants can print any fragments of his paintings on them.
For each signature on a piece of paper, Dali received $ 10.
With the growth of material well being, Gala increasingly acquired a reputation as a whore.
She treated Dali like a mother, while not showing any maternal feelings towards her daughter.
In August 1962, the Muse turned 68.
She performed plastic surgery and chased young handsome men with renewed energy, showering her favorites with money.
It was said that " her boys are worth a fortune."
Sometimes lovers did not limit themselves to taking gifts from Gala.
One of them, Eric Samon, was having a romantic dinner with Gala in a restaurant, and at that time his accomplices tried to steal her car.
However, Gala attracted young lovers not only with money: some were fascinated by her as a woman.
Like, for example, William Rothlein, a 22 year old drug addict who hung out on the streets of New York.
Gala fed William, who looked very much like a young Dali, dressed him, weaned him off drugs and brought him to Verona, where she usually forced her passions to swear eternal love.
This time the love was really long and passionate.
Rothlein sent Gale telegrams from America: "I donot understand anything I love you I donot use drugs I donot drink I'm lost I love you I'm going crazy please telegraph me or call me immediately I need you I love you I need you donot leave me."
At some point, Dali was even sure that Gala would go to William.
Usually, when she left him with another lover, Dali was glad of a week's freedom, but then he began to get bored.
This time everything seemed more serious.
The artist wrote a letter to his Tick, begging not to throw it.
But Gala's passion for William dried up when he failed an acting test with Fellini.
After some time, Rothlein died of a drug overdose.
Gala, like a little girl, was delighted with Dali's gift — an old castle in the town of Pubol near the Port of Lligat.
Dali liked to brag that he could visit this love nest only at her written invitation.
The last big love in Gala's life was Jeff Fenholt, the main actor in the Broadway musical "Jesus Christ is a Superstar".
A large grand piano was installed for him in the living room of the castle.
Gala bought Jeff a house for $ 1.25 million and gave Dali paintings.
Subsequently, Fenholt became a televangelist in California and denied that in their relationship I had sex with Gala.
How could he sleep with an old woman who suffered from skin cancer?
When the Gala once again retired to the castle with a young admirer, Dali called one of his friends: Nanita Kalashnikoff or Amanda Lear, who came to stay at his house for a week or two.
Dali met Nanita Kalashnikoff, a Spaniard who married a Russian, at a charity ball in New York.
She was the daughter of a writer, the author of semi pornographic novels that Salvador secretly read as a child.
At first, Dali seemed crazy to her, but after that they became very friendly.
Dali was almost ready to fall in love with Nanita.
Their relationship was not sexual, but there was certainly a certain amount of eroticism in it.
Another close friend of Dali, the famous singer Amanda Lear, was the living embodiment of his ideal — a hermaphrodite.
Dali met Amanda in the Parisian nightclub "Carousel".
The future star performed there under the name of Peki d'Oslo, and her real name (that is, his) was Alan Tap.
Dali enjoyed revealing Amanda's secret to people.
He showed her photos to friends and asked: "Do you like it?
But she is a man!"
But it wasnot just her transsexuality that attracted Dali.
She was beautiful, intelligent, insightful, spoke several languages, was interested in art and asked questions.
Dali was happy with the role of a teacher and the fact that he could appear with Amanda in public, as if with a young mistress.
Galu was initially infuriated by Dali's girlfriend.
In dozens of photos, the opponent's face is cut out.
However, she accepted the existence of Amanda, because it did not threaten the marriage and she could safely retire to Pubol with her young men.
Last days
In the late 70s, Dali's health deteriorated sharply.
At the age of 73, he felt much worse than Gala.
The doctor who examined the artist found that Dali was drug dependent on antidepressants, which Gala stuffed him with.
The combination of the sedative valium and the stimulant amphetamine caused irreparable damage to his nervous system.
Dali's neuroses prevented Gala from leading a full blooded life.
It is believed that she tried to poison her husband.
The weak and sick, Dali and Gala could no longer, as usual, go to America or Paris for the winter.
The wet weather and the tramontana aggravated the melancholy...
They were constantly fighting.
During one of the scandals over Fenholt, Dali pulled his wife out of bed in a rage, and she broke two ribs.
Another time, she fell down the stairs — perhaps not without Dali's help.
In February 1982, Gala underwent surgery to remove the gallbladder.
By the summer, she no longer tried to get out of bed.
Cecile Eluard, having learned from the newspapers that her mother was dying, came to the Port of Lligat.
But neither Dali nor Gala wanted to see her.
The artist's muse died on June 10, 1982.
Gala's body was embalmed by the best Barcelona specialists: Dali wanted it not to be exposed to decay for as long as possible.
She was buried in her favorite red dress from Dior.
Gala's death was a great grief for Dali — and at the same time a liberation.
And those who breathed a sigh of relief were the Spanish authorities: if Gala had died later than Dali, all his paintings would probably have sailed overseas.
She never fell in love with dear Dali Spain.
After the death of Gala, Dali decided not to return to the Port of Lligat.
His manager could now take away with impunity whatever he wanted from there.
Priceless items from Dali's house can still be found on the black market.
The artist's life became increasingly gloomy.
He wanted to, but could not write — his right hand was trembling terribly.
Nurse Elda Ferrer recalls: he hardly spoke, constantly sobbed and made animal sounds for hours.
In his hallucinations, Dali imagined himself as a snail.
"For two years, I have heard only one distinct phrase: my friend Lorca."
Taking care of Dali was a real nightmare.
He threw plates of food at the nurses, spat, scratched.
At night, Dali was afraid to sleep.
A wire with a bell was stretched to his bed, which he furiously rang when he wanted to call a nurse.
This usually happened several times a night.
To make life a little easier for themselves, the staff replaced the bell with a light bulb.
On the night of August 31, 1984, a short circuit occurred in the wiring.
The bed began to smolder.
Dali tried to call for help, but no one heard.
Only after some time the nurse noticed the smoke.
Dali was hardly found in a smoke filled bedroom: he was lying unconscious next to the bed.
Dali was put in a car, and the same nurse on duty took him away from the fire.
"A murderer, a bitch, a criminal!"
Dali shouted at her.
Dali spent the last years of his life under the roof of his Theater Museum in Figueres — in the Galatea Tower.
He died on January 23, 1989, holding the hand of his faithful servant Arturo Caminada, who had worked for the artist for almost 40 years and considered him and Gala his family.
In his will, Dali did not leave Arturo a single peseta.
Kaminada couldnot believe it.
He died less than two years later and never gave an interview, although he knew more about the private life of the genius than anyone else.
Rumor attributed his death to a "broken heart".
Dali's last wish was not fulfilled.
The artist wanted to be buried with his face covered, so that no one would see him disfigured by old age and illness.
But during the funeral, 15 thousand people looked at him...
Ana Maria was not among them.
She celebrated mass in memory of her brother, and a year later died of breast cancer, refusing to see a doctor until the last moment.
As one of the family friends said, " they both died from Dali syndrome.
Both were a little paranoid, there was fear in their souls."
Did Dali, lying in his tower, hung with pipes, remember his father's curse: that he would die alone, in poverty, without friends and relatives?
Caminada said bitterly: "Senor Dali never loved anyone."
A life lived under the sign of shame has caused pain to many people.
But who has the right to judge his actions?
Great egoists are also capable of love.
Dali's last words were: "I want to go home."
Which house did he remember?
A hotel room near Marseille, which he and Gala did not leave for two months, indulging in love?
The attic in Figueres ' father's house, where the young Ana Maria posed for him?
The house where he was born, where there were flowers everywhere and his mother's favorite canaries lived in cages?
Or maybe the terrace of the summer house in Cadaques: under the shade of eucalyptus trees, Ana Maria laughs at Lorca's jokes and smiles at their fun, Father...
J. Gibson "The life of Salvador Dali, full of shame"
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