Dali' Gala - Small But Beautiful

The portrait Dali did in 1931 of his beloved Gala, then wife of the poet Paul Eluard, is very small, barely 13,9 x 9,2 centimeters, but it has the added value of it being the very first picture he had painted of her. The Dali foundation had acquired it from Sotheby's in New York for 542,000 dollars.

It was an oil-collage painted on carton, based on a photo of Gala, with the image appearing as if emerging from cigarette smoke. Appeared in this painting all the Dali iconography: the lobster, the bird, the squirrel, the seashell and the ants. All that accompanied Gala with her very full and long hair, symbolising a perfect woman, who observes the spectator with fixed, clear and inquisitive eyes. In the lower part of the carton, one can read 'pour l'oliveta Salvador Dali, 1931'. (Oliveta is diminutive of Oliva), one of the twenty or so endearing names he called her. Amongst them there's this one 'Lionette' (Little Lion) because he said, she roared when she was angry.

He gave this painting to the then couple Gala-Eluard, at that time Gala had stayed with Dali with her husband's knowledge and permission. This fact was confirmed later in their correspondence. But the painting is kept by Eluard. It was later passed onto the hands of Albert Field, a professor in Manhattan, who had seen it in the joint exhibition with Joan Miro in the MOMA. In 1941. He was so impressed by the work of Dali that he decided to dedicate his studio with body and soul, and he soon became a collector of Dali's work.

Dali had given him in that same year an autograph and Field conserved it as a sign of destiny, and he began to compile a catalogue of Dali's art, published in 1996. The portrait of Gala was one of the first 2 Dali painting he bought. When he died in 2003, his collection passed on to his sons, one of them just sold the Gala portrait in the Auction at Southeby's.

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