Salvador Dalí's Largest-Ever Painting Heads To Auction In Paris.

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Salvador Dalí's 13-Panel Stage Set“Bacchanale” Heads to Bonhams Paris-With a €200,000–€300,000 Estimate

A work made to be seen from the back of a theater-vast, theatrical, and slightly unsettling-is about to enter the auction spotlight. Bonhams will offer Salvador Dalí's (Spanish, 1904–1989) Bacchanale, described as the artist's largest-ever painting, in its Surrealism sale in Paris on March 26. The monumental oil and pigment on canvas stage set carries an estimate of €200,000–€300,000 ($232,750–$349,120).

Bacchanale was created for the eponymous ballet staged at the New York Opera House, and it arrives at auction not as a single canvas but as a constructed environment: 13 panels in total. The ensemble includes one large backdrop, framed by four sets of staggered canvases that would have shaped the viewer's sightlines onstage. The work was originally mounted on a wooden frame, which has since been lost.

At the center is a panel depicting the Mount of Venus, overlaid by an outsized swan with wings spread wide-an image the source describes as a symbol of sin and desire. Around it, the side panels return to Dalí's familiar lexicon: small skulls, skeletal limbs, and vacant eyes, motifs that turn decorative repetition into something closer to a psychological refrain.

The ballet itself premiered in New York on November 9, 1939, and Dalí framed it as his first“paranoid-critical ballet”-his term for an all-encompassing artwork in which image, narrative, and staging fuse into a single proposition. His role extended well beyond set design: he conceived and produced the stage environment, wrote the libretto, designed the costumes, and shaped the overall vision.

Dalí's collaborators included Léonide Massine, director of the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, who handled choreography. Coco Chanel contributed as well, designing part of the costumes and accessories-an intersection of Surrealist spectacle and fashion-world precision that still reads as unexpectedly modern.

In recent years, Bacchanale has circulated as an exhibition object as much as a theatrical artifact. It was first shown at the Salón de Arte Moderno in Madrid in 2023. In 2024, it served as the backdrop for 10 performances at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, curated by Jaime Vallaure and Tania Arias. Last year, it was on view at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan.

Bonhams is positioning the lot as a centerpiece of its annual Paris spring sale devoted to the movement.“For the fourth-year running, Bonhams celebrates the enthralling world of Surrealism with a dedicated spring auction in Paris,” said Emilie Millon, head of Bonhams' Impressionist & Modern Art department in Paris, in a press statement. She added that the sale will include works by“many of the most innovative and leading figures of Surrealism, from Francis Picabia to Man Ray,” and highlighted Bacchanale as“the largest painting created by Salvador Dalí for the New York Opera House.”

The March 26 auction will also feature paintings and works on paper by Leonor Fini, Man Ray, Francis Picabia, André Masson, and Valentine Hugo, among others-an ensemble that underscores how Surrealism's legacy continues to move between the intimate scale of works on paper and the grand ambitions of stagecraft.

If Bacchanale sells within estimate, it will be a reminder of a market truth collectors sometimes forget: the most consequential Dalí objects are not always the most portable. Some were built to surround an audience-and to make the boundary between art and performance feel porous again.

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