{"id":182965,"date":"2025-10-01T16:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T16:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/182965\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T16:49:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T16:49:07","slug":"italy-art-police-seize-21-suspected-fake-works-from-salvador-dali-show-salvador-dali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/182965\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy art police seize 21 suspected fake works from Salvador Dal\u00ed show | Salvador Dal\u00ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Italy\u2019s art squad on Tuesday seized 21 artworks from a major exhibition in Parma dedicated to works by Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/a> on suspicion they were falsely attributed to the Spanish surrealist.<\/p>\n

The show, entitled Dal\u00ed, Between Art and Myth, had only been open for a few days at Palazzo Tarasconi<\/a> before police confiscated the allegedly forged works, including drawings, tapestries and engravings.<\/p>\n

Doubts over their authenticity emerged in January when officers from the Rome unit of the Carabinieri art squad carried out a routine check of the exhibition when it was hosted at the Museo Storico della Fanteria.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the inspection, the kind we generally do at museums, something seemed to be amiss,\u201d Diego Poglio, the senior officer leading the investigation, told the Guardian. \u201cWe noticed that only lithographs, posters and drawings by Dal\u00ed were on display, along with a few statues and other objects, but no paintings or anything of importance. It was difficult to understand why someone would want to organise an exhibition of such low-value works.\u201d<\/p>\n

The squad raised its suspicions with the Gala-Salvador Dal\u00ed Foundation, based in Figueres, Catalonia, which revealed it had never been contacted about the exhibition by its organisers.<\/p>\n

Poglio said: \u201cWe found this absolutely strange, because if you want to organise an exhibition of an artist\u2019s works, especially such an important one, you can\u2019t not go through the foundation which manages the collection.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dal\u00ed Theatre and Museum in Figueres; experts from the Gala-Salvador Dal\u00ed Foundation, based in the Catalan town, \u2018also suspected ambiguities\u2019. Photograph: Imagebroker\/Alamy<\/p>\n

The police sent photographs of the artworks alleged to have been falsely attributed to Dal\u00ed, who died in 1989, to the foundation, which agreed that \u201csomething didn\u2019t add up\u201d and dispatched a team of experts to Rome.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey also suspected ambiguities and so Rome prosecutors gave the order for the 21 works to be seized,\u201d said Poglio. \u201cNow we will proceed with the necessary technical and scientific investigations to determine whether the works are authentic or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poglio emphasised that the investigation was in its preliminary phase and nobody was yet suspected of wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s art police<\/a> regularly tackles cases of reproduced works by the world\u2019s famous artists being sold or exhibited.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a significant presence of fakes in the market, especially in contemporary art,\u201d said Poglio. \u201cIt is a global phenomenon.\u201d<\/p>\n

In February, police in Rome discovered<\/a> a clandestine workshop where fakes of paintings by Pablo Picasso and Rembrandt were produced before being sold online.<\/p>\n

The discovery came a few months after Italian police dismantled a Europe-wide forgery network<\/a> suspected of producing replicas of works by artists including Banksy, Picasso, Andy Warhol and Gustav Klimt.<\/p>\n

Often the forgeries only come to light when they are displayed at prominent museums.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of those behind the exhibitions act in good faith,\u201d said Poglio. \u201cThat being said, we must always be careful \u2013 those in charge of the scientific curation must always conduct thorough checks on authenticity before displaying the works.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Italy\u2019s art squad on Tuesday seized 21 artworks from a major exhibition in Parma dedicated to works by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182966,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-182965","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-canada","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}