Gala

1945 (?)
Teatre-Museu Dalí, Figueras

Galatea of the Spheres

1952
Teatre-Museu Dalí, Figueras

Dalí from the Back Painting Gala from the Back

1972-73
Teatre-Museu Dalí, Figueras

Atomic Leda

1949
Teatre-Museu Dalí, Figueras

Central Detail of the ceiling of "Salón Noble"

1972-73
Teatre-Museu Dalí, Figueras

Saint George
Antoni Pitxot

1976
Teatre-Museu Dalí, Figueras

Bronze Statue in Atrium
"Big Lady"

1970 (?)
Teatre-Museu Dalí, Figueras

Tire Pillar of Wisdom

about 1974
Teatre-Museu Dalí, Figueras

Dalí's love for his Galatea was legendary, and there is little doubt that her influence can be seen in all his work. She was ten years older than he, a strong personality in her own right, and his fiercest critic and protector. And for him, she was the subject of every work. When she died before him, the air went out of his creative tires.

One of Dalí's most successful, experiments with the interplay between mirrors, painting, and photography. Note the surprise of Dalí's face.

Dalí was obviously familiar with Europe's "great art" and the enduring (and sexy!) mythological tales that suggest great art, of which the Leda-and-Zeus-the-swan is a favorite. It's a great excuse to paint a nude woman. All women, touchingly, were Gala to Dalí.

The Dalí Museum in Figueras hangs more than Dalí, but later practitioners of "Dalísmo" -- which is whatever the curators say it is. Here, it is a series of strikingly well painted "slate-lichen paintings" that "copy" great Spanish Art in an intriguing yet curiously mocking way. This one mocks the innumerable stiff Grandees that stuff the Louvre and the Prado.

Another work I ached to photograph but could not -- poor lighting, no-flash rule -- was by an American, a surprisingly life-like and attractive but unremarkable sculpture of a female nude in a glass case. The photograph I wanted was of the ardently attentive viewers, in particular a statuesque beauty in white whose clothing was more revealing than the statue's nakedness -- a point Dalí would have been happy to make.

Dalí's women were almost all modeled after the willowy Gala, and yet here we have the Earth Mother greeting visitors at the Dalí Museum. Did this bronze just fall into his hands? Is it conscious or unconscious homage the Lipschutz's massively gorgeous women? Dalí never explained or apologized...