տուն Uncategorized Painting bought for €150 found to be Salvador Dali’s earliest surrealist work

Painting bought for €150 found to be Salvador Dali’s earliest surrealist work

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An oil painting bought for a mere €150 (£120) from a dusty antiques shop in northeastern Spain 26 years ago has been discovered to be the earliest surrealist work by Salvador Dali, art experts confirmed on Thursday.

The colourful scene — depicting angels swirling in the sky around a womblike cloud formation above a flaming volcano — caught the eye of Tomeu L’Amo, a young art historian as he browsed canvases in a cluttered antique shop in the city of Girona, northeastern Spain in 1988.

He suspected it may have been an early work by Catalan artist Salvador Dali but the shopkeeper insisted that was impossible as it bore an inscription with the date 1896, eight years before Dali was born.

Nevertheless, Mr L’Amo purchased the artwork for 25,000 pesetas — around £120 in today’s money — and spent the next quarter of a century trying to confirm his hunch.

“When I saw its colours I suspected it was a Dali. That was my opinion but I did not have proof. I investigated and little by little I became convinced that it was indeed an early work by Dali,” he said at an unveiling of the painting in Madrid’s Institute of Bellas Artes on Thursday, Telegraph informs.