From movie. A private home on Muntaner street in Barcelona, two valuable though unknown paintings by Salvador Dali hanging from the walls and three brothers in charge of a criminal plot specializing in the theft and theft of works of art. Going in and out, the works of art wrapped in blankets and with their original frames, but not before rummaging through a few drawers. The loot? Two charcoal drawings that Dalí made in 1922 to illustrate a luxurious edition of ‘Les grâcies de l’Empordà’, a book by the politician Pere Coromines that was never published.
The works, valued at 300,000 euros, had always been in the hands of the Coromines family and only once, in 2004 and coinciding with the centenary of the artist’s birth, had they left the apartment on Muntaner Street. “In the house there were about twenty works, but they only took the two originals,” says Sergeant José Luis González, head of the central unit of Historical Heritage of the Mossos d’Esquadra.
The thieves undoubtedly knew what they were doing. Or maybe not so much, as will be revealed later. The fact is that one Sunday at the end of January 2022 they broke into the apartment and took the two Dalís. “They are two charcoals from 1922, from the first period of a more naïve Dalí, still linked to ‘noucentisme'”, points out the director of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Montse Aguer. Two works, ‘Vino rancio’ and ‘Las Sardanas de la fiesta mayor’, which are now back in the hands of their owners after a year of police investigations and a police operation by the Mossos that resulted in the arrest of three men from 50, 53 and 55 years.
Detail of the paintings at the time of their recovery
Those arrested are credited with a total of seven robberies and they are accused of belonging to a criminal group and robbery at home. During the operation, watches, jewelery and five graphic works attributed to Joan Miró still pending authentication. A Catalan police website allows you to consult and identify the material stolen in robberies in private homes.
robbery by chance
Before recovering the works, the Mossos followed the trail of the criminal group for four months and in May 2022, after an attempt was made to place the paintings on the market, they arrested the three members of the gang and two other people who made the paintings. times intermediaries. “We have not been able to know if it is a commission, although we believe not, since there are other robberies of the same group in which they have not been successful,” explains González. “They were lucky that Dalí’s signature was identifiable,” he adds.
On the real price that Dalí’s works could have on the market, Montse Aguer prefers not to comment, although she does stress that there are fewer and fewer works of the Empordà genius that can be bought, a detail that undoubtedly affects their price. . The 300.000 euros, the Catalan police qualifies, it is the value that the owners give to the pieces.
The Mossos have taken the opportunity to present another operation that has made it possible to dismantle a forgery plot and sale of counterfeit graphic work through a specialized website. A scam that has reached more than a dozen countries and is based on the distribution of counterfeit lithographs by Picasso, Miró, Keith Haring or Dalí, among many others.