Illuminating Gala’s complex personality through her clothes
The exhibition in 2020 that the Púbol Castle devoted to Salvador Dalí and Gala Dyakonova’s relationship with Christian Dior opened up a hitherto unexplored line of research. Now the Dalí Foundation has taken this further with another exhibition in the castle that gives greater insight into Gala’s personality through her wardrobe.
The Awakening of the Myth is the result of a collaboration with La Roca Village shopping centre with the purpose of internationalising the “free and chameleon-like” figure of Gala on the 130th anniversary of her birth. The exhibition will display a selection of outfits from among the thousand that make up the textile collection of the Dalís, in three phases over the course of a year. The first phase of the exhibition, Spring-Summer, opened on March 18 and until June 2 will display eight of Gala’s dresses in the attic of Púbol Castle.
Most of the outfits, which have required meticulous restoration by Carme Masdeu and Mari Luz Morata, belong to prestigious fashion firms, such as Dior, Cardin, Loewe or Givenchy. However, Gala would resort to more quirky pieces if they responded to the public image she wanted to project, such as a dress purchased at the El Dique Flotante department store in the sixties. Also noteworthy is the outfit designed by Dalí in 1948, with a brick pattern reminiscent of the trompe-l’oeil he created for the decoration of Púbol Castle, and the Dress of Tears designed with the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli in 1938.
The purpose of the exhibition, says the director of Dalí Museums, Montse Aguer, is to “continue to illuminate the enigmatic and complex personality of Gala” beyond the stereotype of passive muse to the genius artist that is usually attributed to her.
For Bea Crespo, coordinator of the Centre for Dalinian Studies and the curator of the exhibition together with Noelia Collado, the content director of La Roca Village, “fashion is a means to play with identity, and Gala builds her image consciously, with an ability to change skin according to the demands of each event but without ever ceasing to be herself”. Gala’s choice of dresses also served to promote Dalí’s work, points out Collado, who recalls that during their years in the US, she was careful to choose American designers. The next phase – Collection of Haute Couture – begins on June 17, while the Autumn-Winter Collection opens on October 7. The project is complemented by photographs by Jordi Bernadó on display at La Roca Village with illustrations of Gala by Carla Fuentes.
