The passion in the marriage between Salvador Dalí and Gala is possibly one of the most famous love stories in history, however, years before Gala's arrival in the painter's life, an intense relationship had already marked Dalí and this story would haunt him until the last of his days.
In the intense decade of the 1920's in Madrid, a young Salvador Dalí would meet two personalities in the Student Residence with whom he would form the most important artistic triad of the 20th century in Spain; Federico García Lorca and Luis Buñuel. It would be Lorca with whom he would have a complicated relationship of admiration and platonic love that filled Dalí's life with intense emotions, and among them, guilt.
Chronologically, Lorca and Buñuel meet in 1919, during a time when ideas and culture were flourishing in Spain. Nightlife, debauchery and entertainment were the essence of Madrid and the favorite place for this was the Rector's Club, just below the Palace Hotel. This place, located comfortably near the Student Residence, became the second cradle of intellectual exchanges, but mainly, good times for the poet and the filmmaker, a place so appreciated by Buñuel that he even referred to it as “the Martini's Sixtine Chapel". After the arrival of Dalí, this type of dynamic between Buñuel and Lorca would change over time.
Lorca became fascinated with Dalí right after they met in 1923; They were completely different from each other, but that only piqued interest in both of them. The more they shared with each other, the less time they left around them. But this was not the case of Buñuel, with a vision and need for more universal expansion, after having traveled to Paris, he returned to the Residence with the certainty that his country was backward in artistic movements, ideas and culture. Everything was ready to flourish in that place that produced intellectuals, but the avant-garde and innovation did not take off due to the limitations of the government and the fights for power that were already announced with tension in the air. It was then that that same year Buñuel “plucked Dalí from Lorca” and convinced him to go together to Paris, where they undertook collaborations that resulted in two banners of the surrealist movement “The Dog of Andalusia” (1929) and “The Age of gold” (1930).
Dalí was always extravagant and with the need to leave his mark on history; he knew that he could be a great figure in art and that is how Buñuel managed to take him with him to France, in search of the development and growth that both needed to take off their careers in events in a larger, richer and more competitive setting such as the French capital in the 20th century. It is then, that being separated by distance, communication occurs between the poet and the painter through letters that would remain as evidence of their affection.
“You are a Christian storm and you need my paganism (...) I will go look for you to give you a sea cure. It will be winter and we will light a fire. The poor beasts will be chilled. You will remember that you are the inventor of wonderful things and we will live together with a portrait machine (…)”
This is how Dalí wrote to Lorca in the letters that the artists exchanged. Between 1925 and 1936, the set of epistles they shared suggests a charm for each other beyond appreciation and tenderness, the shadows of a relationship that had to be kept secret hang over each word, turning all this action into an intellectual game of words full of admiration that reveal the true nature of the feelings behind each phrase. Querido Salvador, Querido Lorquito, Epistolario 1925-1936 (Elba, 2013) is journalist Víctor Fernández's compilation of the correspondence between these artists and includes letters between Lorca and other characters such as Dalí's sister and father. But as time went by, Dalí changed during his stay in France; His growing success, extravagant nature, and fusion with surrealism led him and Buñuel to see Lorca as someone who remained in the past.
In his letters, Lorca seems to want to enchant the painter with his words, his prose poetry and his daring declarations of affection: "I think of you, and I never thought more intensely than now, it's already the last straw. I always remember you, I remember you too much. I have to think that you are very ugly to love you more..." But on Dalí's part, the answers seemed to have a greater intention of being at Lorca's lyrical level and not of really corresponding to him. The painter even revealed in interviews that Federico was in love with him, that there were even attempts at sexual approaches, but that since he did not identify as homosexual, he decided to cut off those approaches and maintain their relationship in a platonic love that remained highly erotic in his best years. Although a consummated relationship between them cannot be confirmed, the love that Federico had for Salvador is, he wrote his Ode to Salvador Dalí (1926), a work of so much feeling and magnitude, that it is even noted that Lorca never did anything like that for anyone else again.
In 1929, both the premiere of “Un perro de andaluz” and Dalí's harsh criticism of Lorca's Romancero Gitano (1928) caused a rift between the two. Another fissure in their relationship was the appearance of Gala in Salvador's life. Over time the letters between Lorca and Dalí became less frequent, Gala's jealousy imposed tension between this communication, and the conflict reached such a point that Federico wrote to Dalí “I don't like Gala.” Consequently, the poet became a forbidden subject in the Dalí house.
Of the letters collected in the epistolary, about 40 are from Salvador to Federico while only 7 are from the poet to the painter, this is because after the Civil War (1936-1939), Dalí's sister sold some of Dalí's belongings, and among those, it is believed that some of his letters. However, all of these are believed to have also been altered by Gala, who was aware of Lorca's feelings for Dalí. It is noted that he got rid of some, burned others and destroyed some more.
In Spain, the advance of the Franco regime in power in 1936 projected its oppression on all ideas that contradicted its own and within these, liberalism. This is how the social figures who sought this development for the country were threatened and persecuted by the regime, among them, Federico García Lorca. Dalí, who was still in France, invited Federico to accompany him and Gala to Italy when he learned of the situation of his friend; The painter had a project to work on a collaboration with the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and thought it would be a good opportunity to get Federico away from the tense situation in his country that was becoming more dangerous for the poet every day. But, on August 18 of that same year, Federico García Lorca was shot in Granada by the Franco regime while he was visiting his family at his parents' house.
Upon learning of Lorca's death, Dalí said that he exclaimed "Olé!". However, as this act can easily be misinterpreted, in part of the documents from Fernández's epistolary, the painter explains that this was because for Federico, that same expression represented the most tragic and heartbreaking moment in flamenco singing, so that was in memory of his great friend. “I had just found out that around thirty of my friends had been killed by anarchists, when Gala took me to Tre Croci, on the Austrian border, to recover my calm. There she left me alone. My obsession increased more.” Dali confesses.
After Lorca's death, Salvador was haunted by the memory of him for the rest of his days, but it was after Gala's death in 1982, when in his solitude he felt the weight of his past. Dalí decided to visit the Student Residence in search of memories, but by that time, he was no longer the same as before. He did not allow himself to be seen nor did he give interviews since the older the artist became, the less he was understood and the worse his condition became, so much so that he could practically not be understood when speaking. However, his nurses assure that after his trip to visit the Residence, he would say "My friend Lorca." And it was in 1986 that biographer Ian Gibson managed to interview Dalí and of this experience he stated "When I interviewed Dalí, he cried remembering Lorca." It is in that same year that a letter that Dalí sent to the director of the newspaper El País is published where Dalí confesses that his relationship with Lorca was “an erotic and tragic love, due to the fact that he could not share it” and although he never denied his enormous appreciation for the poet, Salvador Dalí lived until the last of his days regretting not having insisted more that he accompany him to Italy, of everything that could not be between them, missing him and always keeping his beloved and great in his memories. friend Federico.
Sources: Heraldo, El País, Cultura Colectiva and El Diario.