With Pierre Colle’s help, Dalí launches his second solo exhibition in Paris in June
8 Viscomtesse Marie Laure de Noailles and her husband, Viscomte Charles de Noailles, were important patrons of the arts in France in the first half of the twentieth century. Maecenas of the surrealists — they financed Luis Buñuel’s L’Âge d’or — and especially of Dalí, whom they gave money to buy the house in Portlligat. Their collection contained important works by the painter, like The Lugubrious Game (1929) [cat. no. P 232] and The Old Age of William Tell (1931) [cat. no. P 285]. 9 La Vie publique de Salvador Dalí, Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’Art moderne, Paris, 1980, p. 23. 10 Pierre Colle was a business associate of Christian Dior and Jacques Bonjean between 1929 and 1931. 11 Translated from: Maurice Sachs, La Décade de l’Illusion, Gallimard, Paris, 1950, p. 49. 12 Exposition d’œuvres récentes de Christian Bérard, Salvador Dali, Jean Hugo, Max Jacob, Jean Lurçat, Pierre Colle, 1933, Paris. See: Formes : revue internationale des arts plastiques, no. XIII, 03/1931, Paris, p. 66.
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FIG. 1
FIG. 2
Christian Dior and Christian Bérard in the fleamarket, ca. 1932. Collection Dior Héritage, Paris
Salvador Dalí. The Sense of Speed, 1931. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres
1931. The show includes one of his best known paintings, The Persistence of Memory (1931) [CAT. NO. P 265],13 that will be acquired by the New York gallery owner and art dealer, Julien Levy. Soon after, in September, Christian Dior — who reappears on the Paris scene after a trip to Russia — decides to embark on a fresh partnership with Colle14 and work with his gallery: “I separated from my partner, Jacques Bonjean, only to share in the even worse luck of Pierre Colle. We went from losses to forced sales,
13 The artist’s work, mentioned in this publication, are numbered according to the Catalogue Raisonné of Works by Salvador Dalí, that can be consulted at https://www.salvadordali.org/en/artwork/catalogue-raisonne/. 14 Dior meets the young poet and subsequent gallery owner Pierre Colle at a Max Jacob exhibition held at the Jacques Bonjean gallery. They immediately strike up a close friendship truncated by Colle’s death in 1948. See: Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 229-230.
A PASSION FOR ART
13
A year before, in 1930, Gala and Dalí are in Carry-Le-Rouet, on the Côte d’Azur when they discover that the Goemans Gallery, where the artist had staged his first solo exhibition in the French capital in 1929 is about to go bankrupt. Fortunately, the Dalís can rely on the support of the viscount and his wife,8 who offer them financial help and include them in their network of friends. It is, in fact, Charles de Noailles who puts Salvador Dalí in contact with gallery owner Pierre Colle,9 who after partnering Dior and Bonjean for a short while,10 decides in March 1931 to open his own gallery at 29, Rue Cambacérès. There, Colle, “who has always owned some of the best paintings”11 opts to champion young, little known, but promising artists like Alexander Calder or Alberto Giacometti, and the most up-to-date artistic tendencies, surrealism being the most outstanding, with key figures like Salvador Dalí. Colle, who also decides to advertise through Formes magazine, uses works by Dalí to promote his first exhibitions and thus captivate the Parisian public [CAT. 02, CAT. 03]. The gallery owner, who has just signed a contract with the young Dalí, counts on him for his inaugural show, Max Jacob and Christian Bérard, a close friend of Christian Dior also feature [FIG. 1] .12
meanwhile continuing to put on Surrealist or Abstract exhibitions, which only drove away the last private collectors.”15 Together they devote a second solo exhibition to Dalí in the Pierre Colle gallery, in June 1932 [CAT. 04], where they show works like The Sense of Speed (1931) [CAT. NO. P 386] [FIG. 2] and the drawing Paranoiac Metamorphosis of Gala’s Face (1932) [CAT. 05].16 From this piece and many others that come later we begin to see how Gala, the muse of the surrealists — who had inspired Paul
15 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 234. 16 Exposition Salvador Dali, Pierre Colle, 1932, Paris, cat. 10 and 25. Figueres, Centre for Dalinian Studies, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, NR 30548. Gala’s name appears for the first time in the title of a work by the artist. See: Bea Crespo, Clara Silvestre, “Gala: The Chronology” in Gala Salvador Dalí. A Room of One’s Own at Púbol, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2018, p. 219.