I stood in Salvador Dalí House-Museum, looking at the sun sparkling on the blue Mediterranean. The studio faces east, so the sun’s first light pours directly through the windows onto the artist’s easel. It is easy to imagine Dalí standing at that same window each morning before beginning his work.
The view from Salvador Dalí’s studio window in Port Lligat.
Through the studio window, the Costa Brava hills rose in uneven folds behind the bay. Brown soil broke through patches of olive trees and scrub.
The land itself had been compressed and heated deep underground millions of years ago as the Pyrenees formed. Wind and sea had since carved the rock into strange, warped shapes — an incubator for Dalí’s imagination.
In the morning sun, the slopes looked dry and rough. Spots of vegetation scattered across the rocky ground, as if they had taken decades of persistent effort in the face of sea wind and Mediterranean light just to survive there.
It hit me. I was not looking at any mere Medi…
