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Gala Éluard Dalí, (26 August, 1894 – 10 June, 1982), usually known simply as Gala, was inspiration for many artists.
Gala was born Helena Dmitrievna Deluvina Diakonova in Kazan, Russia, to a family of intellectuals. Among her childhood friends was the poet, Marina Tsvetaeva.
In 1913 she was sent to a sanatorium in Clavadel, Switzerland to treat her tuberculosis. She met Paul Éluard while in Switzerland and married him a few years later. She moved to Paris with him and they had a daughter named Cécile.
Gala became involved in the Surrealist movement with Éluard.
Gala was inspiration for many artists including Éluard, Louis Aragon, Max Ernst and André Breton. Breton, the "ideologue of surrealisme" later despised her.
In 1929, Éluard and Gala, and their friends, visited a young Surrealist painter in Catalonia. The painter was Salvador Dalí. An affair quickly developed between Dalí and Gala. Dalí was 11 years younger than Gala. They married in 1932. She underwent a hysterectomy at around this time.
She was a muse for Dalí, who said that she was the one who saved him from madness and an early death. Indeed, behind his artistic genius Dalí was a troubled, insecure and disorganised man, and it was Gala who acted as his agent, the interface between the genius and the real world. In doing so she hurt many sensitivities, and was accused of being materialistic.
Gala had numerous affairs, to which Dalí did not object. She had a fondness for young artists, and in her old age she often gave expensive gifts to those who associated with her.
In the hands of Dalí, she earned for herself the position amongst the pantheon of the greatest objects of love the world has seen. Gala is a frequent model in Dalí's work, often in religious roles such as the Blessed Virgin Mary in the painting The Madonna of Port Lligat. Dalí's numerous paintings of her show his great love for her, and some are perhaps the most affectionate and sensual depictions of a middle-aged woman in Western art.
Gala died in 1982 and was buried in the Castle of Púbol in Catalonia which Dalí had bought for her.et:Gala Éluard ja:ガラ・エリュアール