The Dali Triangle in the Emporda
Cadaqués
The
young Dalí used to spend the summer in this seafaring village, considered one
of the most beautiful in the Empordà. His image appears in numerous works of
the artist.
AGE
FOTOSTOCK
Landscapes that
inspired the life and work of the Gerona artist.
Few artists have had as much bond and
fascination for their homeland as Salvador Dalí by the Empordà. He himself
recognized that the Tramontane, the wind that often ravages this Catalan
region, was responsible for its "complete madness". In the Empordà
was born, lived, created and died. And also in this corner of the province of Gerona
exhibits much of his legacy, in places that witnessed his life and scenarios
for his inspiration.
To understand Dalí you have to visit Figueres,
the city where he was born and where the young Salvador would spend his youth.
He came to the world in 1904 at number 6 of Monturiol Street, which he himself,
years later, would put the motto of "the street of geniuses". Dalí
was baptized in the church of Saint Pere, located on the street of the same
name, two blocks from his home. In the same way is located the Museum of Toy of
Catalonia where, among porcelain dolls, brass cars and zoetropes’, there is an
exhibition dedicated to the infant Dalí, with many family photographs and the
inseparable doll of the artist: “Osito
Marquina”.
In the Café
Emporium, Dalí wrote years later with Luis Bunuel the script of the film An Andalusian dog (1929)
Near the museum, it is La Rambla, in those
centric cafes a teenager Dali spent hours drawing life around him. In one of
them, the Café Emporium, wrote years later with Luis Bunuel the script of the film
an Andalusian dog (1929).
Youth work
As a young man, Dalí already made a constant
performance of his life and did not tire of giving vent to the extravagance.
However, the culmination of that exhibitionism came in its maturity with the
reconversion that he himself directed of the theater of Figueres to turn it
into the present Theater-Museum Dalí that, in his words, was "an absolute
surrealist object". The museum displays a unique number of works and eras
of the artist and includes some of his most acclaimed paintings, including
Self-portrait with Fried Bacon (1941) and Galatea de las Spheres (1952), as
well as sculptures, ceramics, engravings, photographs, holograms And the
extraordinary collection of jewelry he designed between 1941 and 1970.
During the artist's adolescence, the Dalí
family spent the summer in the heart of the Costa Brava, in the picturesque
town of Cadaqués (35 km away). There Salvador had his first painting studio in
a small fisherman's house near Port Alger. In the years he spent in this place
he was visited by great friends like Garcia Lorca and Buñuel, and there he also
met the love of his life, Helena Ivánovna - the world would know her as Gala -
who settled in the hotel Miramar - Today the Residence - to spend the summer of
1929.
Dalí painted in pictures the landscapes he admired so much. The stone
orography of the Costa Brava between Cadaqués and the Natural Park of
Cap de Creus is discovered in works such as Girl in the Window (1925) The
Specter of Sex Appeal (1932) or The Weaning of Food Furniture (1934)
Other non-landscape elements also became part of the Dalian universe. For
example, the Espardenyes, the traditional footwear of the region that appears
in some of his sculptures, porrones and bread of pagès that he used to introduce
in his creations as an allegory of "art as food."
From the seafront of the couple in Portlligat, we continue to the
interior of the Empordà to meet other enclaves of the Dalí Route. About half a
kilometer you will reach the Sanctuary dels Àngels, raised on a hill and
surrounded by pine trees. There, betraying their exhibitionism, Gala and Dalí
married in secret and in the strictest privacy in 1958.
The muse of the
genius died in 1982 and, after being embalmed, was buried in the crypt of the
castle, dressed in an elegant red dress of Dior
Decades later, the artist's wife wanted to retire from public life so the
marriage acquired Púbol Castle, 10 km from the sanctuary, to which Gala would
move when she turned 76. She was responsible for decorating it with an
aesthetic that reminded her of her aristocratic Russian origins. The muse of
the genius died in 1982 and, after being embalmed, was buried in the crypt of
the castle, dressed in an elegant red dress of Dior. Just beside it was another
crypt, originally designed to burial Dali. But it was empty, since the genius
Empordà decided at the end of his days that he wanted to rest forever in the
museum of his native Figueres and had a mausoleum built in one of the rooms.
There he was buried in 1989, exactly 25 years ago.
MORE INFORMATION
How to get there: The
nearest airport is Girona-Costa Brava. From Girona, the A-7 motorway has an
exit to Figueres, 42 kilometers to the north.
Ruta de Dalí
Tourism Costa Brava
