Salvador Dalí 1904-1989
There is one Catalan above all other Catalans - Salvador Dalí. The whole of Catalonia - on both sides of the border - is influenced by this prolific artist. There are Dalí festivals and happenings all the time, and there are long queues outside the Dalí museum in his native town Figueres, Spain - all year round.
The Dalí Museum, Figueres
Nobody placed Catalonia on the map like Dalí did. He was incredibly proud of his homeland and never failed to show it. When you drive through the area where he grew up - from his hometown of Figueres down to the Costa Brava, to Cadaqués and Port Lligat, where he had a house - you recognise the landscape from his paintings. The trees, the sea, the sky - I swear I can even see his surrealist images floating around in the air!
The reason Dalí sprang very much to mind yesterday when I was writing about Perpignan La Catalane, was that he is famous in this city for especially one big crazy act. He had an epiphany at Perpignan train station on the 27th August 1963 and shouted out that this train station was the Centre of the World! How's that for wild imaginings! If you've seen the train station in Perpignan, you can't help but wonder what got over him. Some say he really did have these kinds of visions, some say he'd been helping himself to hallucinatory stuff. A friend of mine once suggested that it was a PR-stunt: Dalí was taking the train up to Paris to sell and promote his work and needed to be seen and heard first.
But if you read the above link, well, maybe he actually did have a vision. He loved Perpignan, and if he could see the train station now, it would make him very proud. Paintings, statues, inscriptions in honour of his legacy, and even a brand new shopping centre called Le Centre Du Monde! - With signs both in French and Catalan, in equal measure - how appropriate.
Dalí designed jewellery too - here a declaration of love to his wife Gala
Another story that intrigues me is this one: Dalí and Gala lived in Port Lligat (I've seen the house, but unfortunately it was not open when I was there), which is on the easternmost point in Spain. He placed a mirror opposite his bed, and the window was behind the bed, so that when he awoke in the morning he'd be the first person in Spain to see the first rays of sunrise reflected in his mirror. Oh - how I relish stories like these! Myths or not.
Can you see my surrealistic girl in the sky? I love these coincidences - the poem and the photo materialised on the same day. The poem first.
Surrealist Big Mama - watching the first rays of sun? I don't think so. Rays of sunset more likely.
Here are my two granddaughters again. Soon they too will be soaring and swimming through sweet summer days:
Wanna go to the very center of the world..... :-)
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