Salvador Dalí first met his future wife Gala in 1929. Their meeting took place at Cadaqués, on Spain’s Catalan coast, when Gala visited with her then-husband, the poet Paul Éluard, and other artists including René Magritte and Luis Buñuel.
Gala, whose birth name was Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, was older than Dalí and already part of the international Surrealist circle. Dalí was immediately captivated by her. Their relationship developed rapidly, and Gala became his partner, principal muse, business manager, and one of the most persistent figures in his artistic life.
The year 1929 is easy to confuse with later milestones. Gala divorced Éluard in 1929, but she and Dalí did not marry immediately. They married civilly in Paris in 1934, according to many standard biographical accounts, and later held a Catholic ceremony in Spain in 1958. Some timelines also emphasize the couple’s later public life in the United States, but those events came after their first meeting.
Gala appeared repeatedly in Dalí’s paintings and helped shape the public persona and career that made him one of the best-known Surrealists.