Gala Dalí

Gala Dalí (7 September [O.S. 26 August] 1894 – 10 June 1982), usually known simply as Gala, was the ethnic Russian wife of, first, Paul Éluard, then Salvador Dalí, and an inspiration for them and many other writers and artists.

Early years

Gala was born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova (Russian: Елена Ивановна Дьяконова) in Kazan, Kazan Governorate, Russian Empire, to a family of intellectuals. Among her childhood friends was the poet Marina Tsvetaeva. She began working as a schoolteacher in 1915, at which time she was living in Moscow.

Marriage to Éluard

In 1912 she was sent to a sanatorium at Clavadel, near Davos in Switzerland for the treatment of tuberculosis. She met Paul Éluard while in Switzerland 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, Cécile, was born in 1918. Gala detested motherhood, mistreating and ignoring her child.

With Éluard, Gala became involved in the Surrealist movement. She was an inspiration for many artists including Éluard, Louis Aragon, Max Ernst and André Breton. Breton later despised her, claiming she was a destructive influence on the artists she befriended. She, Éluard and Ernst spent three years in a ménage à trois, from 1924-27. In early August 1929, Éluard and Gala visited a young Surrealist painter in Spain, the emerging Salvador Dalí. An affair quickly developed between Gala and Dalí, who was about 10 years younger than she. Nevertheless, even after the breakup of their marriage, Éluard and Gala continued to be close.