Another aspect of forgery that surrounds Dali’s name has to do with the mass production of his prints. Until the 1960s, Dali had produced very few prints, and once mechanical methods of printmaking came into practice, Dali never created prints by traditional lithograph or other methods again.
1940 book illustration print
According to Dali’s lawyer, there are literally hundreds of counterfeit Dali prints circulating throughout the United States…and who knows how many worldwide. These prints can retail for as much as $5,000 each, but are simply cheap mechanical reprints that cost as little as $5 to produce. This market has made as much as $1 billion for United States counterfeiters. Most of these were most likely to have been created after 1980, when Dali no longer signed anything after falling ill in New York.
Dali first began to conduct unethical printmaking in the 1960s, when Dali had been commissioned to create a series of watercolor paintings on Dante’s Divine Comedy. This is considered to be one of his best works in book illustrations. Over 3500 woodblocks were engraved for this commission, and perhaps the amount of time and energy it took to create these pushed Dali over the edge. After all, Dali was not known to turn up easy money, and this project was certainly not easy.
Dante
Dali would create no more original prints after the 1960s, preferring to create only machine-made prints for the rest of his career. The process of creating machine-made prints has strict guidelines in the art world, and it is unclear whether Dali followed them. In order for machine-made prints to be accepted, the artist must create the plate, oversee the production and sign each print, but it is not likely that Dali did this every time. By the 1970s and 1980s, most of Dali’s new prints and even paintings were disregarded as fakes, and to this day, there is much controversy surrounding his prints.
Las Profesiones: Chemist, 1979
Perhaps the biggest scandal surrounding Dali’s prints was in 1974 when Dali was to produce 78 illustrations for a set of tarot cards. These were to be reproduced into editions of 250 lithographs. After a dispute over the contract for this commission, Dali agreed to sign 17,500 blank sheets of paper which would be used for the yet to be produced tarot card prints. However, it is said that while signing, Dali lost count and actually signed around 3,000 blank sheets. The tarot card lithographs were never made, and instead, the blank sheets were sold to one Leon Armeil. It was later revealed that Armeil was one of the worlds leading producer of fake prints from Picasso, Chagall and of course, Dali.
