Continuing our theme of Twin Souls in the past and present, today we discuss the artist and master of self-promotion, Salvador Dali. The story goes that when he was 25, he met the wife of a friend, the poet Paul Eluard, who was the Russian-born Gala. Beautiful with a youthful figure, she was ten years older than he, but looked far younger. He recognized something in her and was immediately smitten. From that time on, Gala stayed with Dali. He believed that she would be the inspiration that his art career so desperately needed, and she saw in him a great artist in need of some encouragement and molding.
As Dali stated later, "Gala became the salt of my life, the steel of my personality, my beacon, my double -- ME. Henceforth, there were Gala and Dali united for eternity." After some time, he started signing his paintings, "Gala-Dali" because, as he declared, "In signing my pictures 'Gala-Dali,' I was simply giving a name to an existential truth, for without my twin, Gala, I would not exist any more."
Of course, the scandal was too much for his family to bear and his father cut them off from any further financial support. Moreover, Gala has numerous affairs, well-known to Dali, but he managed to overlook them, at least publicly. Although their union drifted apart in their later years, he grieved heavily when she died at age 87.
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