A Stirring Threesome: Max Ernst's Seduction in the Eye/"I"

Rather than the proverbial surrealist muse, Gala—or Elena Ivanovna Diakonova by her birth name—was a woman of independent spirit whose dominating character and rational intellect operated quite unlike that of most of her contemporaries. Feared by some and venerated by others, her role for the unfolding and development of Surrealism remains yet to be fully explored—an omission that might be partly attributed to her less procreative and thus allegedly more "passive" stance. Beside the two 'official' relationships with Paul Éluard and Salvador Dalí, it was however her peculiar interaction with Max Ernst that made for a notable episode in the 1920s, when he moved in with the Éluards in Paris as they embarked on a ménage à trois. This article focuses on Gala Éluard as both the paintings or drawings and the woman behind them to investigate their critical prominence in Max Ernst's oeuvre. Center of attention and focus of adoration in Paul Éluard's poetry and Salvador Dalí's painting, Gala played a decidedly more ambiguous role in the oeuvre of the budding surrealist where an underlying tension characterizes her appearance that far exceeds a passive presence as she emerges as a driving force of his work, a pivot of creative inspiration. Enigmatic, elusive, and exotic, she exerted a deep fascination that often sparked great adulation. As her persona got eternalized in the German artist's multilayered compositions, Gala appeared as a continual protagonist whose reoccurrence marked the nascent movement. Turning to the Russian "inspiratrix," this article traces her influence on Max Ernst's iconography of the early to mid-1920s to shed light on the mythical status she held within his oeuvre and how her persona ultimately gave way to Surrealism.