Dali

I would be grateful to know if there is a paintings conservator with
experience in genuine Dali paintings who would get in touch with me.
We got a painting in the studio, which appears to be a version of
the so called Great Masturbator. The painting is not fully identical
to the famous piece from Madrid or Florida. It is very easy to
dismiss paintings like this, maybe the following description of
material does indicate something typical, or very untypical.

The support is a very strange kind of tablecloth. It is printed on
one the primed side with a green print of 5mm squares connected with
a zigzag line. The fabric had a lot of give, because it has extreme
cusping. The two layers of thin white priming are slabbed on in a
fast manner. It had been repositioned on the strainer made of very
unfinished light wood.

The paint layer has little gloss more like acrylic medium than oily
ones. The paint layer is placed on pencil drawing. The pencil lines
do not appear to vary from the original lines. This makes me very
suspicious of the technique of a copyist.

The painting could have the age of 40  to 100 years.Considering the
different Signatures of Dali, I guess there is nothing unusual. It
is in the right lower corner, after the a is a new start of the
brush stroke and the l and i is written in one flow. Does this ring
a bell with someone? Is there anything I shall look for, which I
have missed?


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 15:79
                  Distributed: Wednesday, May 22, 2002
                       Message Id: cdl-15-79-012
                                  ***