A frail, brilliant little girl with a generous smile and a laugh so vast it doubled her over, Gala Dalí was born in Kazan, Russia, in 1894, the year Nicholas II, the last czar, was crowned. She survived the Russian Revolution, two World Wars, and the Spanish Civil War, creating work that reflected the major events of her century.
The second in a family of four children, Gala was only 10 when her father disappeared while searching for gold in southern Siberia. Her brother Vadka stepped in as a friend and protector, and she found comfort in her studies and imagining herself as a heroine of the great Russian fiction she avidly consumed. A star pupil at the M.G. Brukhonenko academy, where the children of Moscow’s intellectuals were educated, she was awarded a diploma, entitling her to teach literature, personally signed by the czar.
