Dali sculptures

Surrealism emerged at the same time as Freudian psycho-analysis in the 1920s prompting some artists to turn their attention to the world of the unconscious. In the words of André Breton, the surrealists’ mentor, their manifest intention was to “express the mechanics of thought”. In 1924, the founding year of the movement, Breton focused on 3-dimensional objects and proposed to make “objects that can only be seen in dreams”. Six years later, Dali applied his owned paranoia-critique method to the construction of objects creating new delirious images that were totally surrealist!
The market for Salvador DALI‘s work is exceptionally deep: in 2006 alone, close to 900 of his works came up for auction including more than 370 sculptures! The market is thus literally flooded with Dali sculptures and engravings. To make the right choice, amateur buyers must take into consideration the number of copies of a given work, the quality and the date of the cast.The majority of Dali sculptures are cast in bronze and the number of copies is the principal determinant of the price: the rarity of a work enhances its market appreciation. Traditionally, the sculptures are cast in 8 copies, but certain have been produced in series of 300 or even more than 400 copies! Naturally, these larger series fetch a much lower price, especially as they are often late casts. Collectors focus primarily on works cast during Dali’s lifetime (i.e. before 1989) as they have a richer and more nuanced patina that the recent casts. They also take into consideration the reputation of the bronze foundry, with Valsuani being the most in demand. Based on these criteria and on the dimension of the work, the sculptures carry a very broad range of prices as can be seen with, for example, one of Dali’s most well-known sculpture themes: his paranoia-critique vision of the Venus de Milo.

Dali “hijacked” the Venus de Milo in 1936 with a distinctly Freudian interpretation that evokes “the drawers of the human spirit”. He embarked upon a multitude of surrealist games with this subject and his most famous version is an antique Venus with her body supporting a number of pompon drawers. Dali made the same piece in several different sizes of which the smallest (roughly 20 cm) sells at auctions for between 1,500 and 2,000 euros. For a slightly larger version (roughly 35 cm) of which 499 copies have been cast, one would expect to pay between 3 and 5 thousand euros on average, a that price range triples for the 70 cm versions cast by the Valsuani foundry in 99 copies (cf the Kohn sale in Cannes last August). Even rarer, a lost wax cast by Valsuani, limited to 8 copies and measuring 114 cm high, which changes hands for between 70,000 and 120,000 euros. Apart from the impact of dimension on the works’ prices, the intrinsic qualities of the piece are, most fortunately, very important as well. For example, one of Dali’s Venus de Milos with drawers measuring less than a metre sold for more than EUR 330,000 in 2000 (GBP 200,000 at Sotheby’s London on 4 December): the bidders were seduced by the age of the cast (1964) and by the painted finish giving the work a most singular appearance.

Dali’s sculptures are less expensive than his paintings which have in fact exceeded the million-dollar threshold on eighteen public auction occasions (of which two in 2006). None of his sculptures have reached that mark.Generally speaking, Dali’s highest sculpture prices are generated by his monumental pieces such as the nearly four-metre Newton de Gala which sold for USD 400,000 on 5 November 2002 at Sotheby’s New York (EUR 401,040) or his Rhinocéros habillé en dentelle of a similar dimension that fetched FFr 3.1 million (equivalent to EUR 472,592) in 2001 at Kohn in Deauville. In 2006, his most expensive sculpture sale generated almost EUR 100,000. This was a Minotaure (1981) measuring 146 cm and cast by Valsuani in 8 copies that sold for GBP 68,000, (i.e. over EUR 99,000) on 8 February 2006, at Sotheby’s in London. Indeed the price of that particular work appreciated by more than 100% in 10 years: the same work cast by Valsuani went under the hammer for FFr 290,000 (roughly EUR 44,000) of the Cannes auctioneer, Kohn, in 1997.