These Signed Salvador Dalí Prints Were Forgotten in a Garage for Half a Century

For 50 years, ten signed prints by Spanish artist Salvador Dalí had been hidden in a garage in London. Now, the colorful lithographs are headed to auction, where they’re expected to sell for £5,000 ($6,600).

Chris Kirkham, associate director of Hansons Richmond auction house in London, discovered the pieces when a client asked him to assess antiques at his home in Berkeley Square.

“During the visit, the vendor took me to his garage, and, lo and behold, out came this treasure trove of Surrealist lithographs,” says Kirkham in a statement from the auction house. “They’d been tucked away and forgotten about for around 50 years.”

Along with the ten Dalí prints, the homeowner also had five lithographs by Théo Tobiasse, a French painter and sculptor. All 15 pieces will be auctioned on September 30, with each Dalí print expected to fetch £300 to £500 ($400 to $660) and each Tobiasse print £100 to £300 ($130 to $400).

The homeowner bought the collection of loose lithographs from a London gallery in the 1970s, according to Hansons. He paid £500 for the entire collection—a tenth of what they’re now expected to sell for.

Born in Spain in 1904, Dalí was one of the most prominent painters of the Surrealist movement, which sought to “release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious,” as James Voorhies wrote on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s website in 2004. Dalí’s art depicted “erotically charged, hallucinatory visions,” often involving melting clocks, telephones and ants.

London man finds signed Salvador Dali prints in his garage

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The artist’s work often sells for astounding sums: His most expensive piece, Portrait de Paul Éluard, went for roughly $17.8 million in 2011. More than three decades after his death in 1989, Dalí is renowned around the world. Earlier this year, a museum in Florida opened an exhibition that allowed visitors to chat with an A.I. replica of the artist.

The recently discovered prints are flush with color. Some of them depict human forms alongside plants, animals and architecture resembling the Roman Colosseum.

“I think the fact these have lay dormant so long has ensured the colors are fresh,” Kirkham tells Sky News. “Each being signed by Dalí gives people a wonderful opportunity to own something the great man has touched.”

Tobiasse was born to a Jewish family in what was then Mandatory Palestine in 1927. He moved with his parents to Lithuania and Paris, where the German occupation forced him into hiding. In the years after World War II’s end, the artist would explore the Jewish experience in his work: His oil and gouache paintings often depict themes of exile and isolation. He would become known for his Expressionist, figurative paintings.

The buyer of the 15 prints originally intended to frame them and hang them in his home, but he “never got ’round to it,” says Kirkham in the statement. “Now his lithographs will finally see the light of day.”

The discovery “felt quite surreal,” he adds. “You never know what you’re going to uncover on a routine home visit.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.