Although Breton was never overtly fond of Gala, Nadja clearly indicates the breadth of her influence on Breton’s thinking in particular, and by extension on the Surrealists in general. She was already famous for being adored and deferred to by two of the most revered artists of the decade. With the publication of Nadja, Gala became known in

Salvador looked so different from the town’s other offspring that he felt constantly on display. He had few friends his own age and developed a lifelong phobia of grasshoppers when some local bullies took to throwing half-dead ones at his head.5 In his early teens, Dalí did manage to forge an important friendship with his wonderful art teacher at

Paulhan, who began by praising Paul’s linguistic experiments, ended his letter by wondering offhandedly if he might like to meet three promising young poets who had just started a new review called Littérature, dedicated to cutting-edge writing.

When Eugène was sixteen, he won a school prize in English, which included a trip to Southampton to improve his fluency. There, blossoming in the freedom of British port life, he crafted the beginnings of a first poem.

At the group’s get-togethers, where women, if they were tolerated, were expected to be silent, Gala’s assertive personality and occasional fervently expressed observations were rapidly becoming irritating. Soupault, who thought that Gala was provincial and pretentious called her a bed bug and nicknamed her “Gala la galle” (“Gala scabies”) because

The vernissage, which ended up being more of a happening than an ordinary art opening, did not disappoint. Cultural celebrities such as André Gide and painter Kees van Dongen turned out to watch Aragon impersonating a kangaroo in the cellar and Soupault playing hide-and-seek by himself on the first floor. As soon as night fell, the lights were

they came upon their friends from Paris. René Magritte; his wife, Georgette; the poet and art dealer Camille Goemans with his mistress Yvonne Bernard; and Luis Buñuel, all in stylish bathing suits, were sitting by the water with Salvador Dalí.

Cécile Simone Andonyle Grindel, a sweet little girl who took after her father, was born prematurely at home on the evening of May 10, 1918, after an excruciating, prolonged, and life-threatening labor.1 Jeanne, conscious of her daughter-in-law’s postpartum fragility, swooped in to care for the infant. Thus Cécile, whose health was supervised

Ernst was also working on Au Rendez-vous des Amis (The Meeting of Friends) his famous portrait of Littérature’s protagonists, in which he prophetically depicted Gala, the only woman in the painting, as an independent soul searching for new horizons. Gala, who is standing next to a bust of the group’s idol, Giorgio de Chirico, has turned her back to