A painting by Salvador Dali, which was kept in a private collection for 75 years, has been found
The New York Art Gallery Heather James Fine Art will present a painting by Salvador Dali in 1932, which was considered lost for many years. The painting is made in oil on canvas, its size is 9 by 6 inches (23 by 15 centimeters). The work has no name, but in the lower left corner there is a signature "Gala Salvador Dali 1932" — this is how the artist marked many works dedicated to his wife Elena Diakonova. Since 1966, the painting has been kept in a private collection in Greece.
The authenticity of the artwork in 2017 was established by the Dali expert Nicolas Descharnes, who in 2014 confirmed the authorship of the work "The Intrauterine Birth of Salvador Dali" circa 1921. The study consisted of infrared imaging, signature and pigment analysis, and archive research. "You can always find some mistake on any fake. There are none here," Desharnes said. The painting was registered in the Desharnais Archive, and now it is on display in the new private Heather James Fine Art gallery on the Upper East Side.
The painting depicts a flagpole or boat mast that comes out of a darkened window, casting a shadow on a dilapidated brick wall with an image of a cloudy sky. Although the symbolism of the painting remains unclear, the window reminded experts of a small house in the Spanish village of Port Ligat, which Dali and his wife bought in 1930. "This is the first known work by Dali, in which the artist combines two recurring motifs that arose in his work in 1932: a suspended mast and a dark window that we look at from the outside of the wall," explained Nicolas Desharnes.
A similar combination, only also with a white scarf, is represented in Dali's painting "Morphological Echo" of 1934-36, exhibited at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg (Florida). The 1930s were the most significant decade for Dali's work, so most of the works of this period are kept in museum collections and only a few paintings have appeared on the art market in recent years.
Heather James Fine Art Gallery Founder James Carona
Keywords: Gallery | Paintings | Collection | Find | Salvador dali