Ian Gibson followed the family lineage past the painter’s great-great-grandfather, Pere Dali Raguer, who was born in Llers in the 1780s, and found traces there of his presumed trade — ruins of the Dali forge, known locally as Can Dague, meaning “the House of the Dagger-Maker”. It was blown to pieces in the 1939 blast.
From Dague to Dogue: Below are two of the maestro’s early landscapes — “Port Dogue” from 1918-19 and “View of Port Dogue” from 1920.
“Crepuscular Old Man”, 1917-18
As a boy Dali often came to Cap de Creus — the Cape of the Cross, Spain’s most easterly point — on boating trips with his family.
The photo here shows the Dali clan on one such outing. He’d watch their friends, the musical Pichot family, perform concerts from their boat moored beneath the cape, a grand piano aboard, which helps explain why the instrument often appeared outdoors in his paintings.
“If I paint grand pianos on cliffs or by cypresses,” he said, “it is by no means a fantastic dream vision — they are things I have seen.”
Seen and participated. As a lad, he recalled, “I espied my first pubic hairs and found expression for my narcissistic desires among the rocks at Cap de Creus. I ecstatically sowed my seed as I masturbated along the coves, creating a sort of erotic Mass between that earth and my body.”
Seen here is “Cadaques (Seen from the Tower of Creus)”, from 1923.
The wildest spot on the Costa Brava — the “Wild Coast” — Cap de Creus has a unique allure because of the way the Pyrenees (the Pirineus in Catalan) pushed southward into the sea as they swelled. The primarily schist and migmatite rock was heaved into dramatic formations that were partially melted in the formative heat, further sculpted by the ferocious tramontana winds and silvered by the Mediterranean sun.
Isolated by the hump of Mount Peni and the lack of a decent road (until the early 20th century), the people of Cadaques were a breed apart from their Empordanese countrymen, developing their own strain of Catalan, known as salat, and preferring clothes of vivid colours that Catalonians elsewhere would have found audacious.
In summers the Pichot family escaped the oppressive heat of their mansion in Barcelona’s Garrigal Quarter to a residence here called Es Tortell (named for a ring-shaped cake, apparently), the larger edifice on the left in the 1910 photo above, overlooking Llaner Beach.
This is where the Dalis stayed until they could build a place of their own, seen almost next door on Platja (Beach) Lane.
The view from Google Earth, with the summer homes circled. The Dali house sits at the foot of what is now called Drecera de Dali — “the Dali Shortcut”.
Both buildings were still standing in 2008, and out front of the Dali home was a sculpture by JM Subirachs dedicated to Gabriel García Lorca, the celebrated poet who was close to Salvador in art school and spent time with the family over a couple of summers. This photo comes from VirTourist.com.
“The Artist’s Father at Llana Beach”, from 1920.
Salvador’s sister Ana Maria remembered him sketching the Cadaques house one evening in 1918 when it was too cold to go outside. “It depicts precisely the atmosphere of the house during the long summer afternoons,” she said. “I was watching in amazement as what we had experienced over the previous summer gradually appeared … All the details are exact, except for the roof of the house, which wasn’t pointed at the front but rather at the sides.”
Ana’s teddy bear peers from a window, and in another a candle flickers because the electricity often failed.
Neighbours arrive as Papa is shown reading the paper, Mama and Aunt Ana sewing, the maids doing the laundry, and little Ana herself playing with friends. Behind a eucalyptus Salvador drew himself painting, surrounded by curious children, and in the foreground dozes the gardener and boat man Enriquet. Also included: the cow that used to terrify the children, come to steal oranges.
“Beneath the dining-room window there is a bench, the same one I still have today, and at both window and door there are glass-bead screens that are ideal for frightening the flies and keeping them out. The other window is protected with fine-wire netting … I can see granny coming out the door, moving the bead curtain to one side. She is dressed in black. She was short, thin and very pretty. My brother would say that she looked as neat as a reel of black silk thread.”
“The Garden of Llaner”, 1920-21
“The Vegetable Garden of Llaner”, 1920
Read about Antoni Pichot’s role as director of the Dali Theatre-Museum in this post.
