The first comprehensive biography of Gala Dali tells the story of the distinctive,
enigmatic, and forceful woman who drove the Surrealist movement and the brilliant
career of Salvador Dalí
SURREAL: The Extraordinary Life of Gala Dalí by Michèle Gerber Klein unmasks the inscrutable queen of the 20th-century art world, who graced the canvases, inspired the poetry, and influenced the careers of her illustrious lovers and husbands with tenderness, courage, and agency.
Available from Harper Collins in bookstores and online retailers on April 1, 2025, this vivid, detailed saga brings to life a charismatic figure, who played a pivotal role in cultural history yet never received the full recognition she deserved.
The result of five years of research and writing, Michèle Gerber Klein’s narrative draws on previously undiscovered and untranslated material, including Gala’s secret diaries, and incorporates exclusive in-depth interviews with many who had never spoken with a biographer about either Gala or Salvador Dalí, including William Rothlein (Gala’s latelife lover), her granddaughter Claire Sarti, and Dick Cavett.
With the First World War raging all around her, Gala Dalí (1894-1982), a penurious, inspired, literature instructor, left pre-Revolutionary Russia for Paris where she lived with her first husband Paul Éluard, France’s most famous poet, and later with the artist Max Ernst as well. By the time the ménage à trois dissolved in 1923, Gala wore the mantle of the Mother of Surrealism. She met the budding artist Salvador Dalí, a decade her junior, in 1929 and rapidly became his mentor, lover, and protector. Marrying him in 1934, with Éluard’s encouragement, Gala subsequently engineered the Dalís’ vast fortune.
At a time when artists and poets held the celebrity status of today’s rock stars and film icons, Gala became the ambassador of the Surrealist movement. She built its popularity across the globe traveling with style in a wardrobe she co-designed with her husband and either Coco Chanel or Elsa Schiaparelli, including the latter’s shoe hat and lip jacket.
An intellectual, creative force, and businesswoman whose originality and strong character both repelled and captivated, Gala survived two World Wars, the Russian Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War. After 1947, she and Salvador lived between France, Spain, and the United States making art that reflected the ongoing social and political changes of the 20th century. Gala’s charismatic life interlaces drama, true love, twisted love, money, art, defiance, daring, and ambition as it unfolds against a background of sweeping social unrest.
About what drew her to the subject, Gerber Klein said: “Surrealism revolutionized art as the world knew it, moving it away from religious or sentimental representation into the kingdoms of intuition and psychic perception, pushing hard against accepted norms. At its center stood Gala — the ‘bad girl’ who not only got away with out-of-the-box behavior, but triumphed because of it. Despite her limited education (as a young woman in pre-Revolutionary Russia she could not attend university), she overcame emotional and
financial setbacks so successfully that she deeply influenced the cultural history of her decades and beyond. Gala was fierce, tender, and intrepid — I find that a compelling combination.”
At the intersection of art, style, and history, SURREAL tells the fascinating story of an unforgettable woman and the undisputable heroine of her own life.
About the Author:
Michèle Gerber Klein is a journalist and cultural historian focused on fashion and art. Her first book, Charles James: Portrait of an Unreasonable Man was named the Financial Times Best Book of 2018. A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, she serves as vice president of the Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation and is a longtime supporter of many arts institutions including Dia Foundation for the Arts, the Drawing Center, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum. She lives in Manhattan.Book Details:
Advance Praise for SURREAL:
“Original, engaging, and fiercely intelligent, Gala Dalí has at last inspired a biography
that shares her own best qualities. In this brilliant book, Klein illuminates the crucial
importance that Gala held not only for her famous husbands and lovers, but for avantgarde art as a whole.”
—Caroline Weber, author of Proust’s Duchess and Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution
SURREAL: The Extraordinary Life of Gala Dalí
Author: Michèle Gerber Klein
Publisher: Harper
On Sale: April 1, 2025
Trim size: 6×9 inches
Pages: 336
List Price: $32.00