Gradiva: What Did Freud and the Surrealists See in Her?

| DailyArt Mag

SURREALISM

Gradiva: What Did Freud and the

Surrealists See in Her?
MAGDA MICHALSKA • 27 APRIL 2020 • 6 MIN READ

Gradiva, After a Greek original, c.4th cent. BC, Musei Vaticani, Rome, Italy.

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Gradiva: What Did Freud and the Surrealists See in Her? | DailyArt Mag

A woman who walks. That's what Gradiva (the name of an anonymous

woman from an antique bas-relief) means, as given by a fictional character
from a novella by Wilhelm Jensen. In other words, it's an invented name for
an unknown woman in stone. However, because of Freud, the figure has
become a myth in her own right.

Jensen

Gradiva, After a Greek original, c.4th cent. BC, Musei Vaticani, Rome, Italy.

The bas-relief is part of a composition showing three women moving from the right

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Gradiva: What Did Freud and the Surrealists See in Her? | DailyArt Mag

(the third woman is kept at Uffizi in Florence). They are associated with three
Agraulides sisters, deities of dew. In Wilhelm Jensen's Gradiva, A Pompeian
Fantasy (1903) the protagonist, who is an archaeologist fascinated by the relief he
sees, names the figure Gradiva after the Roman god of war, Mars Gradivus. He's
so bedazzled that he meets the woman among the ruins of Pompeii, but he's
unsure whether or not he is dreaming.

Freud

Edmund Engelman, Freud's study, 1938. Source: Flickr.

The story was brought to the attention of Sigmund Freud by Carl Gustav Jung. In
his study Delusion and Dream in Jensen's "Gradiva" (1906), which was one of his
first analyses of a literary piece, he examined the novella as though it were a
psychiatric case. He did this in order to explain how external stimuli may
sometimes bring the most hidden psychic tensions to the surface. When Freud
visited Rome in 1907, he wrote to his wife Martha Bernays

"I saw today a dear familiar face"

and he bought a cast of this relief. Upon his return, he hung it on the wall of his
study at Bergasse 19, Vienna near the famous couch.

The Surrealists

André Masson, Gradiva, 1939. Source: Wikiart.

Nadeau Maurice wrote in A History of Surrealism in 1965 that Gradiva 'the woman
who walks through walls' was the muse of the Surrealists. This is because she was
a character on the verge of mythology, dream, and psychoanalysis. Therefore she

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Gradiva: What Did Freud and the Surrealists See in Her? | DailyArt Mag

was a perfect fit for all those exploring the subconscious and fantasy, especially
the sexual fantasy.

Salvador Dalì, Gradiva, 1931, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, Spain.

Salvador Dalì found an incarnation of Gradiva in his future wife, Gala. He met her
shortly after having read Freud's study and having become fascinated by Gradiva.
Gala served as a model for him in a few representations of Gradiva. He even
called her Gradiva, as exemplified in his autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador
Dalí, published in 1942:

To Gala–Gradiva, the one who

advances. (...) She was destined to
be my Gradiva, ‘she who advances,’
my victory, my wife.

Salvador Dalì, Gradiva Finds the Anthropomorphic Ruins, 1932, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid, Spain.

Dalì's interest in the feminine and female body did not just lead to a broad body of
painting though. It also had an influence on the conception of André Breton's
Parisian art gallery which he named, yes, you guessed it, Gradiva.

Salvador Dalì, William Tell and Gradiva, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, Spain.

Duchamp
In 1937 André Breton opened the doors to the gallery Gradiva. He gave the name
a yet another meaning, as its letters stood also for the initials of women who were

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Gradiva: What Did Freud and the Surrealists See in Her? | DailyArt Mag

muses of the Surrealists (Gisèle, Rosine, Alice, Dora, Iñes, Violette, Alice). He also
accentuated the word ‘Diva’ in the lettering on the façade by capitalizing the “D”.

Gradiva Gallery, 1937, photograph, annotated ‘1938’ by André

Breton, Association Atelier André Breton

The door, designed by Marcel Duchamp, took the form of an incised silhouette, this
time not of a walking woman but of a couple, closely entwined and standing.
Maybe because he wanted the visitor to take a step to get closer to Gradiva, not
just to watch her walk and dream about her.

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