The Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) has a work coming up for auction. The art dealer who put this piece up for sale purchased it for £150 (about 280,000 won) at a dwelling in the UK. The expected selling price is £30,000 (about 5.56 million won).
According to BBC broadcasts and others on the 30th (local time), a watercolor painted by Salvador Dalí measuring 29 cm by 38 cm will go up for auction on October 23 at Cheffins auction house in Cambridge. It has been certified by Nicola Descharnes, known as an expert on Salvador Dalí.
A dealer, who requested anonymity, bought this work at a clearance sale in a dwelling in Cambridge in 2023. He later learned that the piece was an authentic 'Beckio Sultano' by Salvador Dalí, which had been auctioned at Sotheby's in the 1990s.
Salvador Dalí was commissioned by the wealthy Italian couple Giuseppe and Mara Albaretto in the 1960s to create a series of 500 works depicting scenes from the collection of Middle Eastern folktales 'Arabian Nights,' but only 100 were completed.
Half of the 100 pieces were owned by the Albaretto couple and were inherited by their daughter, Cristina, who is also Dalí's goddaughter. The other half were damaged or lost while in the possession of the publishing house. Cheffins auction house suspects that the work being auctioned this time is one that was lost by the publishing house.
The auction house noted, 'It is very rare for provenance information about a work to disappear in the modern art world, so this piece is an important rediscovery for Dalí researchers,' adding, 'It also shows another aspect of Dalí.'