Salvador Dali’s wife and muse was Gala, whose real name was Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a mysterious woman, and she recognized artistic geniuses when she saw one.
She had two older brothers named Vadim and Nicolai, and she also had a younger sister, Lidia. She grew up in Moscow, and when she was eleven years old her father died. Her mother then remarried to a lawyer, who gala liked and she got an education thanks to him. She was a fantastic student at the M.G. Brukhonenko Academy for Young Ladies. She finished her studies there with very high average mark. In 1921 she suffered a worsening of the Tuberculosis she had for a while, and her family sent her to be cared for at the Clavades Sanatorium in Switzerland. There she met Eugéne Grindel (later known as Paul Eluard). They were similar ages and both loved reading, which led them to be great friends. In 1914 they were both discharged from the sanatorium. Gala went back to Russia and Eluard went to the war front. Before that though, they had both proposed to eachother. In 1917 they got married, and the next year they had a baby girl, which they named Cecile. In 1922 she started a relationship with Max Earnst, which ended in 1924.