The house where the painter Salvador Dalí was born and lived in his early childhood, located at number 6 Monturiol street in Figueres, will open to the public next July. The visitor will discover in a completely immersive journey the life and artistic legacy of the Empordà genius, from his birth to his last days.
Salvador Dalí was born on May 11, 1904 on the mezzanine floor of a three-story modernist-style building in the center of Figueres. His father, a notary by profession, had rented the space together with the ground floor of the building where he had his office.
It was in this house where Dalí lived the first seven years of his life, until the family moved to another nearby house, located in the Plaza de la Palmera, where the painter spent his youth and adolescence. A house, which will be open to visitors starting this Saturday and where, among others, the poet Federico García Lorca or the filmmaker Luís Buñuel stayed when they visited the city.
However, it has been in the house where he was born, where the Consistory has put more efforts to make it visitable. Since the then mayor of Figueres, Marià Lorca, acquired the space occupied by Father Dalí’s old notary’s office and part of the mezzanine in 1995, successive town halls have taken steps to open it to the public. In 2011 they acquired the ground floor, the rest of the mezzanine, and the first and second floors, and between 2005 and 2006 the façade was rehabilitated.
A fact that will be a reality next July, after the museography of the space is completed, which could be ready in the first half of June and after the relevant testing period.
It will be a totally immersive tour in which the visitor, through an audio guide that will be synchronized with the images that are projected on the walls of the different rooms, will be able to better understand the many facets of the polyhedral figure of Dalí.
From his personal to artistic side, through the facet of painter, writer, thinker, performer or lover of science and mathematics, as explained by Eduard Bech, the director of the Museu de l’Empordà. The tour, however, will not have original furniture from the period nor will it follow a chronological order of the exhibition.
The trip will start at Dalí’s father’s notary’s office. A space that will be completely museumized at the beginning of May, when, between days 1 and 3, coinciding with the Fires and Festes of the Santa Creu de Figueres, several open days will be held. You can visit the ground floor, the notary’s office and the third floor in groups of eight people.
The visit, when it is finally open to the public in July, will continue inside the building, on the mezzanine, the floor where Dalí was born. In the room of the surrealist artist, the original painting and drawing of a reclining female figure and an engraving with friezes are still preserved, the authorship of which is still unknown, although it cannot be ruled out that they belonged to the young Dalí.
It will be on the mezzanine, the place where the Dalí family lived, where the visitor will be able to learn about the painter’s relationship with the members of his family: with his dead brother, whom they baptized with the same name as the genius, Salvador; a situation that, according to Bech, would cause him “deep trauma”.
The relationship with his mother, Felipa Domènch, who died when Dalí was only 16 years old, or with his sister Ana María, four years his junior, with whom, according to Bech, he maintained a very good relationship until 1929, is also discussed.
He explains that it was that year when the young Dalí met Gala in Paris and the surrealist group, which visited Cadaqués. So Gala was with Paul Éluard, with whom she had a daughter in common. “Gala no longer returned to Paris and she stayed with Dalí. She was ten years older than him and very modern for the Cadaqués of 1929, she was topless,” explains Bech. That was one of the reasons that would explain the family breakdown, but not the only one.
Another of the triggers – adds Bech – for the family expulsion was the inscription that Dalí wrote on a drawing exhibited in a gallery in Paris: ‘Sometimes I spit on my mother’s portrait for pleasure’. His father did not forgive him the offense, disinherited him and expelled him from home. “The figure of the father accompanies the entire visit, it was very important to explain the family breakdown,” explains Bech.
The immersive tour, which has the voice of Salvador Dalí and a female narrator’s voice, as well as other sounds, images, mappings, projections, sound or light effects, also allows you to meet the friends of the young Dalí at the institute, such as the painter architect and educator Ramon Reig or the also painter Marià Baig.
He also delves into his most public facet, such as his performances and trips to Madrid, New York or Cadaqués; in the arts that he cultivated beyond painting, such as cinema or theater or in the relationship he had with the media.
The guided tour will also allow the visitor to discover the stamp that the landscape of the Empordà and Cadaqués left on him and on his work. “We see how he incorporates this landscape in childhood works and until the end of his artistic productions,” explains Bech.
The rehabilitation and museumization of the space has cost about three million euros, which have been provided by European funds Feder and the Figueres City Council. A figure to which must be added the contributions made previously by the Girona Provincial Council, the Generalitat and the Ministry of Housing.
The mayoress of Figueres, Agnès Lladó, explains that the opening of the birthplace to the public will allow us to better understand the artist and the legacy he left, and is confident that this “new tourist offer” will be a benchmark in the city.
The Councilor for Culture, Alfons Martínez, spoke along the same lines, pointing out that the house where he was born, together with the building where the adolescent Dalí lived, “close the Dalinian axis that, together with the Teatre-Museu, multiply the attraction of visitors of the city by Dalí”.
