Ernst, Max (1891-1976)
Gala Éluard
1924
Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 65.4 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
This evocative portrait reveals the deeply intertwined personal and artistic lives of members of the Surrealist circle and depicts the movement’s fascination with dreamlike states. Gala Éluard was muse and lover to three members of the Surrealist movement: her two husbands, poet Paul Éluard and artist Salvador Dalí, and Ernst, who painted this work based on Man Ray’s photograph of Éluard’s eyes. With curious forms rising from her unfurling forehead, Éluard becomes an imagined embodiment of Surrealism’s wide-eyed interest in art’s power to explore the mysterious territories of the unconscious mind. (MET)
See also:
• Dalí, Gala (1894-1982)