Salvador Dali Fake Prints
Fine Art Registry® Investigation

Dali Expo Scandal!

In Torino, the Bricherasio palace is showing 135 works of the great surrealist painter. The press is enthused. However, most of the paintings are false. Paris Match explains this mystery to you. And takes it apart, painting by painting.

This painting, Angélus de Millet with Clouds, an oil dating from 1933, Dali's great surrealist period, has never been shown. It is presented at Torino, at a Dali exhibition. An exceptional event because, with 135 works, the Bricherasio palace claims to offer the largest retrospective of the Catalan master since his death. Canvases, watercolors, previously unpublished drawings, all coming from the collection of Mara and Giuseppe Albaretto, Torino multimilionaires who were friends of Dali’s. But the experts and collectors have delivered their verdict: the majority are fakes.

[Caption]
Property of Giuseppe and Mara Albaretto, the Angélus de Millet with Cloud is a knock-off.

Angelus de Millet With Clouds (89 x 109 cm), (on the left page), was inspired by Atavistic Remains After the Rain (here on the left), oil on canvas 1934, smaller in size, which has been in the collection of Carlo Ponti. On the right, Mara and Giuseppe Albaretto with Salvador Dali in Paris in 1964 in the Hotel Meurice, one of the master’s much frequented places of residence.

[on the photos themselves] faux = fake Vrai = genuine]

ACCORDING TO ROBERT DESCHARNES, THE EXPERT ON SALVADOR DALI ACCORDING TO CHRISTIE'S AND SOTHEBY'S, ONLY THREE OUT OF 26 OF THE OIL PAINTINGS ARE GENUINE!

Stories of Dali-related fakes abound: lithograph editions extended to infinity, questionable engravings, blank sheets of paper signed, publishers under lock and key… There, on the first floor of the Bricherasio palace, one is suddenly seized by a strange impression. Here Soft Watches from 1939 comes from perhaps Dali's most famous, Persistence of Memory (1931), livened up with the telephone from Sublime Moment with a rocky background of an unrecognizable triteness of Cape of Creus. And other Soft Watches even more curious because they are dated 1968, a time when Dali had long since changed his style of painting. The Angélus de Millet reminds one at once of Sleep and Atavistic Remains After the Rain. And what are these two strange figures doing, which Dali would never have painted? The Roof of Geodesic Eggs is a knock-off of Geopolitical Child Observing the Birth of the New Man. The elephants in troops of three, four or eight have only a little to do with those of The Temptations of Saint Anthony, and the portrait of Ana Maria, the artist's sister, is laden with an uncharacteristic clumsiness. Where do these canvases come from? They belong to a couple of collectors from Torino, Mara and Giuseppe Albaretto, known particularly until now as owners of the originals and the publication rights to a number of great classics of world literature illustrated by Dali, and also those of the Bible in five volumes and of Pater Noster. They were also self-proclaimed friends of Dali, at the time when Perpignan and its railway station were again the center of the world: "We met him in Cadaqués in 1956, at a party given in his honor," they say. "We have not left him since." The Albarettos had enough money to follow the immutable paths of the Dali couple: summer at Port Lligat, fall and spring in Paris at the Hotel Meurice, winter in New York at the Saint Regis.

"We never realized that we were creating a collection," said Mara. "When Dali finished a piece, he would ask, 'Now what shall I do next?' And Beppe would say to him, 'You will do the Thousand and One Nights.' He was delighted. 'Ah, the Thousand and One Nights, I'll take mescaline!' When the Bible, the Divine Comedy, Romeo and Juliet came out, Gala offered us an exclusive contract for the editions. For three years he worked for us..." "...While creating other pictures, naturally," Beppe adds. He followed at the same time his unlikely quest in search of canvases from the great surrealist period, related elsewhere by others (see the sidebar).

The verdict of Robert Descharnes was handed down, following his return from Torino. Fake: 23 oils, 16 watercolors, 2 objects, 9 drawings. Robert Descharnes who was his photographer and long term friend, is the author of many authoritative books on Dali. He became Dali's trusted confidant during the tragic last years of his life. He runs a company, Demart Pro Arte B.v., which, from 1986 to 2004, held Dali's rights by transfer. His extensive knowledge of Dali's work has made him the acknowledged expert for the Anglo-saxon auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's, among others. For many years, and already during Dali's lifetime, he has been hunting fakes around the world. He methodically annotated the catalog from Torino: No 5, No 6, No 7, No 8, No 9, No 10, No 11: fake. "All the Hamlet are fake," he continues, "Many of the Don Quixote also, which is interesting when one considers that the Albarettos own the originals. Sometimes there are substitutions of works, particularly with the Don Quixote. Very often the dimensions are not correct, nor the colors. And then the signature, always the same small, mechanical signature which comes back. Dali never signed like that!" Descharnes remembers that on the 25th of April 1987, in the presence of two witnesses, Don Salvador Dali Domenech, marquis of Pubol, signed in front of a notary a document denying the Albarettos the right to present themselves as experts on his work. (View this document here.) And that the next day, still at Torre Galatea, where he was then living, he had declared as false two drawings from the Thousand and One Nights, the equivalents of which are now on show in Torino, Simbad the Sailor and Pegasus. And Robert Descharnes adds, "I warned the directors of the departments of modern and contemporary art at Sotheby's and Christie's, reminding them that fakes which were complained about from the Albaretto collection had already been presented to them and refused."

"This exhibition is nauseating," says André-François Petit, surrealist specialist, who was very close to Dali. Expert for the law courts, he owns or has owned many major canvases, and no important retrospective on Dali would be done without him.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Torino exposition alerted the Morses. Eleanor and Reynolds Morse who own, at their Foundation in St. Petersburg, Florida, the most beautiful collection of Dali in the world. "A fascinating collection," acknowledges Eleanor Morse, who takes a definite position. "I am not an expert, but my husband and I knew Dali for a very long time. I cannot say anything about the watercolors, there were so many.... The Garcia Lorca is a beautiful painting... Then things get strange. The Soft Watches dated 1931, the Angélus de Millet With Clouds, Roof With Geodesic Eggs, Height of Pleasure are not by Dali, in my opinion, nor are the Soft Watches of 1939, nor those of 1968. The Lobster is horrible. As for the portrait of Ana Maria, Dali's sister, the canvas looks more like a Picasso. And I don't believe that Ana Maria would ever have sold her paintings through a dealer; when the brother and sister started to argue, Dali's lawyer came and took away everything! This exhibition seems to stir up troubled waters. It is awful for Dali's reputation."

Amanda Lear is also adamant. She is also not an expert, but Dali adored her. "A woman with the intelligence of a man," he would enthuse. From 1965 to 1980, she hardly left Dali.

"I was there, I posed for him, I prepared the backgrounds, I cut up the butterflies... Dali would have had a hard time creating a painting without my seeing it. And then, for him, an oil, that was a summer affair. He only painted them in Spain, because in Paris and New York he had no easel. For me, three quarters of the works shown are false. Dali painted very small; there the canvases are 1.5 meters. Take Tuna Fishing, for example, an oil sketch seems impossible to me. And there is, in the real painting, a well-known murderer who at the time fascinated Dali. There, he is missing. Ana Maria is very badly designed, the elephants are improbable, the three Soft Watches are copied from other paintings. The dimensions are off. The Lobster is monstrous. In the whole Thousand and One Nights series from 1966, I note dreadful things... And then the signatures are not genuine. There must be two or three forgers there."

Frightening! It's also the opinion of Ralf Michler, owner of a Munich gallery and co-author, along with Leitz Lopsinger of the Catalogue Raisonné in two volumes of prints and engravings of the master. "I have the feeling," he says, "That the majority of the paintings are not by Salvador Dali. For example, Soft Watches of 1939, compared to those produced in the 1930s, are no more than a sugary copy. Also the other Soft Watches are certainly not by his hand, nor the Angélus de Miller With Clouds... I could go on and on. The Elephants are dated 1964, when Dali hadn't been painting that way for 20 years. That would give him something to laugh about! Are many of the other paintings visibly fake? The Don Quixote, which is awful! And the Bay of Port Lligat, Homage to Dulcinée. As to the signatures, he never signed that way. M. Albaretto asserts that many of these paintings were painted by him and he never wanted to present them in a grand exhibition. Now there have already been prints made from these works with the same fake signatures. This exposition is a major scandal. How is it possible to publish these paintings in a catalog? And I don't understand why someone doesn't go to the police and have these paintings seized and the pigments analyzed."

Go to the police? Antonio Pitxot is a Cadaqués painter whose family knew Salvador Dali's familly for a long time. The latter chose him as a privileged companion in his later years and offered him a whole floor of the Figueras museum to show his work.

Pitxot, current director of the museum, feels that it is not the responsibility of the Dali Foundation. He explains, "I saw a catalogue of this exposition. Some of the images seemed doubtful to me. For now, that is not something to alert the foundation about. We have a commission for authenticating works solely on the request of their owner. It meets three times a year. The next meeting will be in February."

Go to the police? Perhaps others in Italy and Germany have considered it. Gian Paolo Olivieri met Dali in 1966, when the Homage to Meissonier along with Tuna Fishing – the real one – were shown at the Hotel Meurice. For thirty years he has been selling Dali prints and drawings in Italy. Olivieri is furious with the Albarettos. "Mr. Bernardinelli, which whom I work, has had serious problems in Germany on account of the prints coming from the Albaretto company. The Soft Watches of 1968, The Three Elephants of 1964, the Homage to Dulcinée of 1968, the Bay of Port Lligat, and some other prints – 14 in total – were seized by the police in Frankfurt."

It must be emphasized here that it was the Bora Art Company of Bologne which sold Bernardinelli the prints coming from the Albarettos, distributed through the German Diner's Club in 1995. This prints were seized by the police. A court action is under way in Frankfurt.

Whether in Paris, Saint Petersburg, Munich or elsewhere, the testimonies agree with invariable precision. It is well understood: the austere façade of the elegant Bricherasio palace in Torino houses a very strange collection.

[Sidebar]
THE WORDS OF MARA AND GIUSEPPE ALBARETTO

Recorded by Marie-France Saurat

"We asked the master to redo for us the surrealist canvases like those of his youth."

Paris Match. Where did you get the oil paintings of the great surrealist period, which predates the years when you knew Dali, from?

Mara Albaretto. We bought most of them from Ana Maria, the sister of Dali, some from his parents and cousins.

P.M. For example the portrait of Ana Maria, did you buy that from her?

M.A. Yes!

G.A. No, not directly from Ana Maria... She was a bit ashamed of selling directly. She had money problems and as she didn’t get along with Gala, Dali could not help. It was through a Barcelona gallery, the Sala Gaspar.

M.A. We also know someone who was a childhood friend of Dali's, Canet. He had a bookshop in Figueras and he knew where Dali's old paintings were, those he had given as presents to people around him. We showed them to Dali, who would say: "Yes, that's mine," and we would buy them.

P.M. And the Twist?

M and G.A. [In chorus.] From Dali directly, the very day of the exhibition.

M.A. We bought it and paid Dali directly.

P.M. Can you say for how much?

M. and G.A. Um... Er...

M.A. The Christ of the Vallés, I remember. In 1962 we paid him $20,000.

P.M. And the whole series of Soft Watches?

G.A. He made many of them...in Italy, in Spain...

P.M. And those dated 1968, did you also buy those from his friends?

G.A. I said to him: "Master, I wish I had some surrealist canvases like the ones you did when you were younger!" And then he redid them, not the same ones, he drew inspiration from them, because I had in my museum typical things...

P.M. And the one dated 1939?

M.A. Bought from Gaspar I think... One can't remember everything! The other Soft Watches were painted before our very eyes by Dali.

P.M. In Port Lligat?

M.A. Yes, he loved to paint in Port Lligat.

P.M. And the Angélus of 1933?