A rooster becomes cocky and begins to be noticed before the presentation. He cackles until he’s hoarse and then remains silent because the new exhibition in the castle of Púbol, almost always austere, provokes concentration, silence and surprise. He has dressed up, in lower case, to show a few of the hundreds of dresses that Salvador Dalí’s companion, guide, administrator (and many other things) wore in her life.
Gala is written in capital letters and the clothes, grouped on mannequins and reproduced in photographs by Jordi Bernadó, a regular on these pages, in almost all the rooms of the Castell speak of style, identity, fashion, character and strength. It was normal that the rooster was left without a voice.
The exhibition The Awakening of a Myth is a collaboration between the Gala Salvador Dalí Foundation and La Roca Village, where questions and answers emerge around the figure who for decades was known as “the muse.” Of course history has put her in her place because she was much more.
“I want to go down in history as a legend,” he told Garbo magazine in 1964. And boy did he achieve it. Years pass, the documents are studied, his life is excavated and it is evident that her figure is gradually emerging from Dalí’s shadow to the point that if Dalí had a shadow it was thanks to her.
“It is a very important year for the Foundation – says Montse Aguer, director of the Dalí museums – because it marks 130 years since the birth of Gala and 120 years since Dalí’s birth and the 50th anniversary of the Teatre-Museu.” How to start the celebrations?
“With a new discourse woven with fashion, with her clothing, in Púbol, her refuge, where her mark is seen more, because she is the lady of the castle, the place where she lives her own solitude, the roses that remember her summers in Crimea , Russian icons, a special decoration, a versatility that give it something very special. “She needs solitude and love outside of all conventions,” she summarizes.
The first eight dresses, out of a total of 24, can be seen twice, on the mannequins and in the photos, in Púbol and in the Roca Village. “Without complicity and friendship we would not have been able to promote this project full of art and imagination,” says Elena Foguet, director of Value Retail for the brand in Spain.
“Fashion is not frivolity, it has been a very enriching project, discovering what was behind each garment. “Art connects souls, provokes emotions and fashion has a creative language,” adds the executive of the Bycester Collection group.
The exhibition has been curated by Bea Crespo and supported by fashion expert Noelia Collado. In the shopping center, in addition to the photos and dresses, murals will appear in tribute to Gala painted by the young Valencian illustrator Carla Fuentes.
“The exhibition reviews Gala’s influence based on how she dressed in clothes that had never been seen before. They have been studied and restored. The clothes are a means to reaffirm her identity,” says Crespo.
“We must emphasize the idea – complete – that we have to influence the fact that the foundation is called diu Gala-Salvador Dalí, and it is not in vain because it has a fundamental role in Dalí’s career: she is a muse and she is wife, but also collaborator in creative and editorial projects, privileged testimony, collector of his work and archivist of their life together.”
The curator remembers that it is Gala who dresses Dalí and that she is concerned with “weaving his disorder” into almost every sense of the brilliant artist’s life. “Both dress to succeed: their fashion archive is chameleonic, complex, vital, cosmopolitan and free.”
“She is a woman – underlines Noelia Collado – who directed and decided the image of both. For her it was a way of self-discovery. There are pieces by Dior or Schiaparelli, Givenchy, Cardin, Cassini, Loewe and others without labels that remind us that her identity goes beyond the brand. The exhibition is a dialogue full of questions and metamorphoses that reveal a multifaceted, androgynous Gala, which recovers the female silhouette in the 40s… it was practical, free and aware of the power of the image.
The curators admit that choosing 24 pieces out of about a thousand has been very difficult. Normal. For his part, Jordi Bernadó, the photographer who has recreated the rooms of the castle with the Gala models, assures that he had “total freedom” to work, although he qualifies with humor.
“They gave me three conditions: not to touch the dresses, not to take them off the mannequin and not to take them out into the garden, which I did achieve with a dress. In some way they are a commission to portray her without her being there, based on her dresses, it is a fashion photo. I have had a nice time. Words say what they say, but they can say many other things. I think the same thing happens with realistic photography, which can suggest many other things.”
