Charles Petzold

About four decades ago, I was wandering around my neighborhood looking for a possible Christmas gift for my mother when I stepped into a commercial art gallery and spotted a print with a very distinctive signature:

This image is not at all what we customarily imagine a Salvador Dali artwork to be like. It has not a hint of surrealism. But because it was so atypical of the artist’s work, in a sense that made it more interesting and appealing. The salesman at the gallery told me that although the print was entitled “Madonna and Child,” it was actually a portrait of Dali’s mother, and the mountains and sea in the background are scenes of Catalonia, where Dali was born.

In the lower-left corner, the print was numbered as 280 out of 300. I don’t remember how much it cost. Maybe a few hundred dollars. The salesman attached a Certificate of Authenticity to the back:

I took it back to my apartment and wrapped it up for my mother for Christmas. She was extraordinarily pleased with the gift. She put it in the prime spot above the sofa in her living room, where it hung for some 40 years.

Particularly after Dali’s death in 1989, it became public knowledge that Dali had promiscuously signed tens of thousands of blank canvases and blank lithograph paper that were later used as the basis of many forgeries. Could this be one? Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the signature wasn’t even on the print! It was on the mat board surrounding the print:

The few web searches I did were not conclusive regarding the authenticity of this particular item, but I’m inclined to be skeptical. I mean — it doesn’t even look like a Dali! There are other copies floating around. I noticed that somebody recently bought one for $100, which probably reflects the market’s opinion of its authenticity.

I don’t like to deliberately deceive people, so a number of years ago, I began referring to it as “the fake Dali,” even in my mother’s presence. She didn’t seem to mind. Maybe she thought I was joking.

After my mother died, I took the painting off her wall and moved it to our little house in the Catskills, where it now hangs in a rather prominent spot in the living room.

Because after all, a fake Dali is better than no Dali at all.