A rare Dalí
The first surrealist work by painter Salvador Dalí, which remained missing for many years, was auctioned for US$10 million.
247 - One of the first surrealist works by the Catalan painter Salvador Dalí was sold at auction in London on Sunday the 10th for US$10 million. The price obtained for the painting is one of the highest of all the artist's work – only surpassed by the Portrait of Paul Eluard, which was sold at Sotheby's for US$20 million two years ago. The current work is called "Honey is Sweeter Than Blood" (1926), painted at the beginning of his career, with strong influences from another Catalan, Pablo Picasso, with whom he is said to have met several times while painting. It also contains references to activities that were being carried out simultaneously, such as his collaboration on the film Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), by Luis Buñuel, suggested in the image of the putrefied horse surrounded by flies.
According to the Dalí Foundation's curatorial team, the painting was inspired by his relationship with the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. The phrase in the painting's title is quoted from his autobiography, *The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí*, where the painter describes his pleasure in masturbation as "sweeter than honey." This theme, incidentally, is frequent in the artist's work. The depiction of a severed head, common in his artistic repertoire, appears in this painting for the first time.