The house where it all began

That the framed pho­to­graph of his dead brother haunted Sal­vador Dalí every time he en­tered his par­ents’ bed­room and saw it on the bed­side table was a child­hood fear we know about from Dalí’s own writ­ings. Yet it is only now that we have the chance to re­live the ex­pe­ri­ence of walk­ing into the bed­room of the no­tary Sal­vador Dalí i Cufí and his wife Fe­lipa Domènech to dis­cover for our­selves the oval por­trait of that baby with the melan­choly gaze.

This is a key func­tion of house mu­se­ums, which evoke the lives of the peo­ple who lived there, turn­ing us into wit­nesses to the mem­o­ries of oth­ers. The pos­ses­sions and ob­jects, the fur­ni­ture, the pho­tographs, the way the rooms are arranged and their am­bi­ence com­bine to help trans­port us back in time.

The house at num­ber 20 Car­rer Mon­tu­riol in Figueres (today, num­ber 6) where Sal­vador Dalí was born at 8.45 on the evening of May 11, 1904, as he records with ob­ses­sive pre­ci­sion in his au­to­bi­og­ra­phy, has been trans­formed into the Casa Natal Dalí mu­seum. The three-storey prop­erty was in­hab­ited until rel­a­tively re­cently and was there­fore in ac­cept­able con­di­tion, al­though there was no longer any trace of the Dalí fam­ily. They left the home where Dalí’s fa­ther also had his of­fice when the artist was eight years old to move to the nearby Plaça de la Palmera.

Of the build­ing that was Dalí’s birth­place, the fa­cade and the splen­did rooftop ter­race that over­looked the gar­den of the Mar­quise de la Torre are two ar­chi­tec­tural fea­tures to have sur­vived. As have the ce­ramic floor tiles with the flo­ral de­signs that were so much to the taste of the bour­geoisie at the turn of the 20th cen­tury. The kitchen too re­mains, all made of stone, in­clud­ing its stone sink. The orig­i­nal lay­out of the home has been al­tered on more than one oc­ca­sion to suit the needs of suc­ces­sive ten­ants, and as the orig­i­nal fur­ni­ture from Dalí’s first home has not sur­vived it had to be recre­ated or re­placed with pieces dat­ing from the same era.

Yet the al­ter­ations made to the house and the lack of some orig­i­nal fea­tures does not mean the mu­seum fails to live up to ex­pec­ta­tions. The di­rec­tor of the Mu­seum of the Em­pordà in Figueres and also the Casa Natal, Ed­uard Bech, points out: “No art­works are ex­hib­ited here, but their con­tents are ex­plained,” es­pe­cially those that shed light on Dalí’s re­la­tion­ship with Figueres and the Em­pordà re­gion, a link, adds Bech, “ that has not been re­flected in any mu­seum in the world”.

Gemma Adell, one of those re­spon­si­ble for the mu­seum’s pre­sen­ta­tion, em­pha­sises the sen­sory ex­pe­ri­ence and the idea that “it’s not a visit to a place but to a life over time”. This pur­pose is made clear in the first room, where we see the holo­gram of Dalí’s no­tary fa­ther tak­ing pos­ses­sion of his new of­fice and writ­ing to his fi­ancee about their up­com­ing mar­riage. This scene recre­ates the en­vi­ron­ment that nour­ished the artist’s early years and be­gins a jour­ney that goes from an in­ti­mate, pri­vate life made up women (maids, cooks, nan­nies, aunts, grand­moth­ers, a mother and a sis­ter) be­neath the shadow of the fa­ther to Dalí’s emer­gence as a pub­lic fig­ure like no other cre­ator be­fore him.

It has taken three decades to get to this point. In 1995, the Figueres City Coun­cil bought the build­ing’s ground floor with a view to pre­serv­ing the prop­erty that rep­re­sented Dalí’s first link with the city. Other suc­ces­sive ac­qui­si­tions had to take place until the en­tire build­ing was owned by the mu­nic­i­pal­ity and restora­tion work could begin. In 2006, the first plan for the mu­seum pro­ject was drawn up under Anna Capella, then di­rec­tor of the Mu­seum of the Em­pordà, and Josep Playà, jour­nal­ist and ex­pert on Dalí’s work. How­ever, that first draft was put on hold due to the 2008 fi­nan­cial cri­sis, and as the years went by a new plan be­came nec­es­sary, which was de­vel­oped by the ar­chi­tec­tural team of Dani Freixas and ex­e­cuted by the Tu­ru­rut com­pany, spe­cial­ists in au­dio­vi­sual and mul­ti­me­dia pro­duc­tions.

Those du­bi­ous about im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ences, fear­ing a ten­dency to trans­form art into pure show, can rest as­sured that the ex­pe­ri­ence pro­vided by the Casa Natal Dalí is im­mer­sive but not in­tru­sive. Every­thing that has been pre­served is treated with re­spect, while the rest is pre­sented with nar­ra­tive clar­ity and a di­ver­sity of re­sources, in­clud­ing holo­grams, kalei­do­scopic pro­jec­tions and au­to­matic hid­den doors that in­vite you to move from one space to an­other. A key fea­ture are the audio guides with­out which, Bech says, “it would be like watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary with the sound off”.

The first floor im­merses the vis­i­tor in the in­ti­mate world of Dali’s fam­ily and their close re­la­tion­ships within the in­tel­lec­tual com­mu­nity of Figueres, such as Joan Subias, who lived on the sec­ond floor, or the ex­otic Mates fam­ily on the third floor who were wealthy and who had lived in Buenos Aires. Also in their sphere was the writer and politi­cian Josep Puig Pu­jades and Jaume Mi­rav­itlles, who would be­come the Re­pub­lic’s pro­pa­ganda min­is­ter dur­ing the Civil War. This part of the visit is par­tic­u­larly evoca­tive, “a pantry of mem­o­ries”, as Bech calls it, with the stained glass win­dows sud­denly trans­form­ing into screens show­ing Dalí’s art­works that were shaped by this pri­vate uni­verse, such as the por­traits of his nanny Llúcia and of Aunt Catalina, of his sis­ter, of the fa­ther, whom he both ad­mired and feared.

On the sec­ond floor, the nar­ra­tor tells us that “we will enter Dalí’s mind”, and goes on to ex­plain how his early patho­log­i­cal shy­ness was over­come thanks to his re­la­tion­ships with Luis Buñuel and Fed­erico García Lorca and, above all, with the ir­rup­tion of Gala and the sur­re­al­ist group in his life. We also learn that from 1927 he began to grow his fa­mous mous­tache that would reach a length of 25 cen­time­tres. Here, lasers and neon lights turn the old rooms into a map of sym­bols trac­ing the pas­sion of the young Dalí for psy­cho­analy­sis, rel­a­tiv­ity the­ory and the fourth di­men­sion: “Sci­ence is my only read­ing,” he said. It is also where Dalí’s Amer­i­can ex­pe­ri­ence is re­counted, his con­tact with Andy Warhol and Hol­ly­wood and his emer­gence as a pub­lic­ity-lov­ing show­man who courted the in­ter­na­tional media.

Ge­nius or not, the depths of Dalí’s con­tri­bu­tion to the artis­tic imag­in­ings of the Em­pordà re­gion is cov­ered on the third floor. A vi­sual ex­plo­sion of im­mer­sive tech­nolo­gies trans­form the floor into a sym­phony of land­scapes in mo­tion, from Portl­li­gat Bay and the Cap de Creus head­land to the Em­pordà plain that in­spired much of his work.

fea­ture Dalí an­niver­sary