PUBOL, April 29: In a small eastern Spanish village, a surrealist castle given by painter Salvador Dali to his wife and muse Gala bears testimony to one of the legendary love stories of our time. The 14th-century Gothic-Renaissance castle, decorated by Dali in his inimitable style, was a token of his lifelong passion for a woman with whom he maybe never had sex and who has been accused of exploiting and dominating him, but with whose blood, as he once put it, he painted his masterpieces.Open to the public since 1996, the castle in Pubol east of Girona - which drew 43,000 visitors last year - is like a trip through the couple's tortuous relationship.
In the 1930s, Dali vowed to make Gala the mistress of a castle, but could keep his promise only in 1971 when she was already in her 70s.
He masochistically barred himself entry unless she invite him, something she rarely did while reportedly enjoying a string of young lovers until she was in her 80s.
Dali met Gala, ten years his senior, in 1929 when shewas married to French poet Paul Eluard. The daughter of a Moscow family of intellectuals, by her real name Helena Diakanoff, had become a kind of official muse for the surrealist movement.
Obsessed by a fear of impotence, Dali abhorred intimate physical contact and preferred masturbation and voyeurism to sex. That did not prevent him from developing a passion for Gala whom, he once said, he loved more than my mother, my father, Picasso and even more than money.
Gala, who immediately realised that young Dali was a genius, left Eluard for him and - incapable of becoming an artist herself - carved herself a role as a kind of mother of his talent.
Once dubbed the last muse, she inspired and corrected his work, modelled for him, sold and marketed his paintings, and helped him earn a huge fortune.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
