Throughout Dali’s life he interacted with a fascinating set of characters. Just a few of the many are listed below. Click on names for Wikipedia entries.
Haakon Chevalier – first translator of Dali’s autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador Dali and also Dali’s 50 Secrets of Magic Craftmanship. Professor of French at Cal Berkeley, solicited atomic secrets from J. Robert Oppenheimer on behalf of a Soviet agent; lying about the contact lost Oppenheimer his security clearance.
Jeff Fenholt – Gala Dali’s toy boy in her later years. Guitarist and singer, played lead in the original Broadway production of Jesus Christ Superstar, later became a TV Christian Evangelist.
Amanda Lear – Dali’s friend and consort for many years of his later life. Model, celebrity singer selling over a million albums, painter, TV show host, transexual.
Prince Matila Ghyka – met Dali in Carmel, instructed him on the mathematics of life forms which led to Dali’s emphasis on the golden ratio and geometric elements in his later works. Romanian novelist, scientist, philosopher, diplomat, friend of Marcel Proust, later taught aesthetics at USC and UVA. Ghyka said about Dali, “I discovered that far from being the publicity-hunting practical joker whose mask he often borrows, Dali is a very great artist and deeply and respectfully in love with the painters craft.”
Mia Farrow – Friend of Dali in New York, see Mia Farrow link. She said of time with Dali, “We lunched on butterfly wings and toured New York City with garbage collectors. He judged sex to be too violent–and showers too.”
Ultra Violet (Isabelle Collin Dufresne) – Consort of Dali before Amanda Lear. French artist and author, after Dali introduced her to Andy Warhol she became a feature player in his troupe.
Michael Powell – knew Dali when Powell was a free-lance photographer on the Coted’Azur, later encountered him at the St. Regis in New York. Powell was an accomplished movie director and producer of The Red Shoes and other classic British films for the Arthur Rank studio. Powel said about Dali, “I liked Dali, and I admired him for his friendship with Lorca, but he never revealed his true self to the world. All the time we were talking, another Dali seemed to stand beside me and whispered in my ear: ‘Clever, aren’t I? Interesting, bizarre, unusual. A clown or a genius? Do you think I’ve overdone it a bit, that bow tie for instance, too much?’ Then with a surge of confidence: ‘But the manner, you must admit that the manner is perfect.'”
Gloria Vanderbilt – attended Dali’s 1941 party, A Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest, in the Hotel Del Monte, Monterey. At the time of the party Vanderbilt was 17 and recently married to Pat DiCicco, an agent and movie producer, as well as an alleged mobster working for Howard Hughes and Lucky Luciano. In 2016, at age 92, she is the only celebrity in attendance at the party who is still alive. Her photo taken at the party is on the wall of the Dali17 museum. Vanderbilt went on to live an extraordinary life, designing jeans and more, birthing two sons, one of whom is Anderson Cooper the TV broadcaster, and enjoying an amazing variety of lovers. These are listed in part by the Publishers Weekly review of Vanderbilt’s memoir, It Seemed Important at the Time: A Romance Memoir.
Erik Satie – composer who died of cirrhosis of the liver the year before Dali came to Paris. Satie’s music was part of the avant-garde artistic scene that Dali encountered there. Dali painted An Homage to Erik Satie in cubist style.
René Thom – French mathematician who developed catastrophe theory, the basis for Dali’s final painting.
Marcel Duchamp – Cubist painter, sculptor and Dada artist and iconoclast who was a friend of Dali.
Traces of Dali 