The translated text by Linda Yiseth Paredes Peralta

Hi peers and tutor.

I share with you my translated text about Landscapes that inspired the life and work of the Gerundian artist, available in Link 4: http://www.nationalgeographic.com.es/articulo/viajes/rutas_y_escapadas/9514/triangulo_dali_emporda.htm

Landscapes that inspired the life and work of the Gerundian artist.

Few artists have had so much link and fascination for their home land as Salvador Dali did for the Emporda. He recognized himself that the tramontane, the wind that usually blew this Catalanian place, was the responsible of his full insane state. In the Emporsa, he was birth, lived, grew old and died. And also in this corner of the Girona providence is shown a big part of his legacy, places that were witness of his life and stages for his inspiration.

To understand Dali you have to visit Figueres, the city that saw his birth and where the young Dali would spend his youth.  He was born in 1904 at 5 Mounturiol Street, where he would call Genius Street some years later. Dali was baptized in Sant Pere church, located in the street with the same name, two blocks from the house where he was born. On the same street is the Cataluña  toy museum where, among porcelain dolls, brass cars and zootropoes (a wheel with drawings,  when spins up, looks like the drawings were with movement ), there is an exposition dedicated to the infant Dali, with lots of familiar photos and the inseparable doll of the artist, Marquina little bear.

 Near the museum is the Rambla, where the young Dali spent hours making drawings about life around him. In one of them, the Emporium Café, he wrote some years later beside Luis Bunuel the script of the movie “un perro andaluz” (1929).

When he was young, Dali made out of his life a constant performance and he did not get tired of a high extravagance life.  However, the end of that exhibitionism came with maturity with the transformation of Figueres Theater he led to turn it into the current Dali museum and theater, as he said, it was an absolute surreal object. The museum shows a unique amount of pieces of art and periods of time of the artist, including some of his most famous paintings, as well as <autorretrato con bacon frito>(1941) and <Galatea de las esferas>(1952), besides some sculptures, pieces of ceramic, pieces of photography, holograms and an extraordinary collection of jewelry he designed between 1941 and 1970.

During his teens, Dali’s family spent summer in Costa Brava, in the scenical town of Cadaques (35 km away). Salvador had his first painting studio there in a small house of fishermen located next to Port Alguer.  During the time he was there, he was visited by some close friends like Garcia Lorca and Bunuel, and there he also met the love of his life, Helena Ivanovna –the world would know her as Gala-, who was at the hotel Miramar –currently the residence- to spend summer of 1929.

Dali printed on the pictures the landscapes he admired so much, the stony orography of Costa Brava between Cadaques and the Natural Park Cap de Creus can be discovered in his work called Muchacha en la ventana (1925) El espectro del sex-appeal (1932) or El destete del mueble alimento (1934). Other elements not contained in landscape are included in Dali’s universe. For instance the espardenyes, the traditional shoes of the village are shown in some of his sculptures, the porrones and pages bread, he used to include them in his artwork as allegory to – art as food-.

The route of the ampurdanes master is keptin the small sea village of Portlligat -2 kilometers from Cadaques-, where Dali and Gala moved in 1949 when he retired from New York. Their home, today turned into a museum, shows on more time that Dali not only melted surrealism in his artwork, but also in his own life. The puzzled architecture, not so usual places, and his kitsch decoration – desiccated polar bear included-were their love nest and creative workshop during more than three decades. The house-museum of Portlligat has just opened a new exposition place, la Torre de las Ollas, where Dali used to work with ceramic and sculptures.

From the couple’s sea house in Portlligat now we continue to the inside of Emporda to know other key fact of the route of Dali. Some kilometers ahead is the sanctuary dels angels, placed over a hill and surrounded by pines. There, betraying their exhibitionism, Gala and Dali married in secret and merged into the toughest privacy in 1958.

Decades later, the artist’s wife wanted to retire of public life, and that was the reason to buy Pubol’s castle, 10 km from sanctuary, the one that Gala would move when she was 76. She was in charge of the decoration based on her Russian aristocratic precedence. The genius’ muse died in 1982 and, after being embalmed, was buried inside the castle’s crypt, wearing an elegant red dress of Dior. Just next to it, there was another crypt, made to receive Dali’s grave. But it was left empty, because the ampurdanes genius decided, at the end of his days, that he wanted to be left eternally in the Figueres museum where he was born and he ordered to build a grave in one of the rooms, then he was buried in 1989, exactly 25 years ago.

Thanks for reading.