Kept in a bank vault for decades, a group of paintings by surrealist Salvador Dalí are now up for auction and valued at between £40,000—70,000 each. The paintings were commissioned in 1969, and capture Dalí's desire to upset what was seen as normal or the standard in everyday life. In these paintings, expected to make close to £1 million collectively, Dalí takes the ubiquitous 19th century lithographs of fruits and exposes them to the subconscious, morphing them into fantastical and meticulously detailed paintings.
According to William O'Reilly, the Director of Impressionist and Modern Art at Bonhams, these paintings are significant because they "give us an insight into his process ... you can almost see him approching traditional images and growing from that."
Most of all, the paintings are fun, and after seeing what Dalí did to 19th century paintings of fruit, we would love to find an app the takes any work of art and churns out what Dalí's subconsious would have done to it.
