The Dalí Birthplace House, in Figueres, brings together these days the well-known photograph of the wedding portrait of Salvador Dalí and Gala with the work that the painter delivered years later to the photographer Melitó Casals, Meli, in an exchange dated in 1974. The reunion has been organized within the exhibition Objectiu Meli, in the space of the invited works, and recovers a relationship of complicity between the artist and who documented some of his most well-known moments.
Dalí and Gala got married by the Church in the sanctuary dels Àngels on August 8, 1958. It was a private ceremony attended by only five people, besides the priest of Cadaqués, Francesc Vila, who officiated the union. Of that day no photographs were taken, so the image that has ended up being identified as a wedding portrait does not correspond to the exact moment of the wedding.
An image taken years later in Portlligat
The photograph was taken two or three years later, during a session in Portlligat, in Cadaqués, when the Diputació de Girona awarded a medal to the painter. Jordi Casals, Meli's youngest son, explains that his father retouched the negative in the studio so that a part of that medal would not be seen on Dalí. Afterwards he framed it, hung it in his studio in Figueres and kept it for more than a decade.
Until that moment, the Dalís did not have that photograph. The piece acquired a singular value over time, both due to the absence of images of the religious wedding and due to the personal and professional bond between the painter and the photographer.
The exchange of 1974
In 1974, coinciding with the inauguration of the Dalí Theatre-Museum, the exchange between both took place. Jordi Casals summarizes it thus.
"We don't know if Dalí told him that he would make him a drawing and the father, in return, gave him the photograph" - Jordi Casals
The dialogue between the photograph and the work has now been reproduced in large format with two images from the day of that exchange. In them, Dalí and Meli are seen shaking hands and giving each other their respective gifts. Among the cited witnesses are Artur Caminada, the painter's chauffeur, and Emili Puignau, contractor of the works of Púbol and mayor of Cadaqués, among others.
A work read as a tribute to the photographer
Santi Coll maintains that it may be the only occasion in which Dalí, while he lived with Gala, gifted a painting to someone. The reading of the piece is completed by Mariona Seguranyes, art historian and Councillor for Culture of Figueres, who highlights the symbolic load of the work.
"One sees the profile of the photographer, but he puts some feet on it, as if it were a kind of sphinx, which were birds that protected ancient cities. He draws it, therefore, as its protector" - Mariona Seguranyes, Councillor for Culture of Figueres
Seguranyes adds that Dalí said he would represent all the Ampurdanese characters and that the only one he ended up representing was Meli. The work incorporates a swallow linked to the staging of Natura morta vivent, from 1955, and a horse related to Sant Jaume el Major. It also includes a brick wall which, in the words of the historian, recalls some interior of the Teatre Museu.
"The piece is a tribute to the complicity they had until then, a tribute that Dalí pays him with all the photographic elements that Meli had been making for his work" - Mariona Seguranyes, Councilor for Culture of Figueres
The exhibition allows to see together, for the first time in this context, the image that for years presided over the photographer's studio and the work with which Dalí responded to that relationship. The ensemble recovers an unusual scene in the artist's environment and returns to Figueres a shared history between the painter and whoever fixed his image for several generations.