The British book and art dealer Bernard Shapero hopes that a series of artworks about the Bible, which Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí made to mark the State of Israel’s 25th anniversary and which comes with a seven-figure asking price in pounds, will find its way to the Jewish state.
“What we would love it to do would be for someone to buy it and give it to the State of Israel,” Shapero told JNS from Miami, where his gallery is showing works by Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Alexander Calder and others at the Art Basel fair.
“Obviously, that would be to go in the museum of modern art in Tel Aviv or the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. That, for us, would be amazing,” he said, of the 1973 series, “The 12 Tribes of Israel.” (Dalí also made a series for the 20th anniversary of Israel’s founding.)
“The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’d love them to be in Israel and have a home there,” he added. But after recently traveling to the United Arab Emirates, Shapero told JNS that the art could do important work there as well.
“They could go to a museum even in the Gulf, where people could see another side of Israel, an artistic side, a beautiful side,” he said. “That would be beautiful.” He would also be happy to see them go to a U.S. museum, he added.
Shapero, who self-identifies as a “proud Jew and definitely a Zionist,” told JNS that he and his staff have researched a set of the series that Dalí gave to Ephraim Katzir, then the president of Israel.
That set “seems to have disappeared,” he said. “It doesn’t seem to be listed in any of the museums.”
“This is something from a different universe,” he said of the suite of Dalí objects that he is selling. “This is an amazing museum-quality item.”
Dalí made between 200 and 300 regular editions of the printed book, each of which could draw 20,000 pounds in value, according to Shapero. The objects he is selling, which are on view in his London gallery, are the original, unique copper plates Dalí used to print the illustrations; the black-and-white sets that were printed and upon which Dalí painted with watercolors; and canceled proofs that Dalí signed.
“This is unique and unbelievably special,” Shapero told JNS. “This is an absolutely unique suite of proof plates and copper plates.”
Dalí signed the watercolor illustrations and noted that he had painted them himself, rather than having a studio do it, according to the dealer.
“They turn something that is maybe worth a couple of thousand pounds into something that is worth 30,000 or 40,000 pounds, because they are actually Dalí watercolors on top of printed places,” he said.
Dalí gifted the objects to Alex Rosenberg, who published the series, and they remained in the latter’s possession until his death in 2022.
The series, which interprets both Jacob’s predictions about the future of his sons in Genesis and Moses’s blessings of the tribes in Deuteronomy, “presents a strikingly surreal interpretation of biblical prophecy, fusing religious symbolism with the dream logic of the unconscious,” according to the gallery.
“Dalí, known for his bizarre surrealist style inspired by Freudian theories of the subconscious, reimagines scriptural emblems using the same techniques and aesthetics that appear in his wide and complex oeuvre,” it adds.
The series includes a front piece, which features a Star of David, and one illustration for each of the tribes of Israel.
Many use imagery from the Bible that has tended to illustrate the tribes in Jewish art—a flower for Reuben, a tower for Simeon, lions for Judah, a snake for Dan, a stag (with skeletal legs) for Naphtali, a troop’s tent for Gad, Issachar toiling, a boat for Zebulun and a wolf for Benjamin.
Other imagery is unique: a boat on red water for Levi, a pegasus for Dan, a woman becoming a tree for Asher, a whale-like creature near the boat for Zebulun and a unicorn for Joseph, usually depicted as an ox.
JNS asked Shapero if a plant that might resemble wheat in Asher might be a reference to the bread that is associated with him in the Bible, and whether the unicorn might relate to the way some have translated the animal re’em that appears in Joseph’s blessing, as a unicorn.
Shapero told JNS that a rabbi from New York had visited the show recently and informed that “everything is biblically correctly referenced.”
“Obviously, Dalí didn’t just go, ‘Oh. You know. Levi, well, I fancy that. That would be like this.’ It was done very specifically and accurately,” he told JNS. “Obviously, Dalí wouldn’t be able to do that on his own, so he clearly had a lot of help from someone who really knew what he was doing.”
“The item is biblically accurate for each tribe,” he said.
Of the maybe-wheat and the re’em, Shapero said, “It’s beyond my personal Talmudic knowledge.”
“I am assured that this is all factually done, and it’s all there to be worked out if you have the ability,” he said. He added that “Dalí loved unicorns, because they are fantastical,” and often put them in many of his works.
“He took advice, but he didn’t live by the rules 100% obviously,” he said.
JNS asked what Shapero made of Dalí’s relationship to faith. The artist at times identified as Catholic and, at other times, appeared to interpret that faith in a rather different way than other Catholics. He also made comments at times that seemed to support Nazism.
“Dalí was a bit of a crazy character. I don’t know what he really thought of religion,” the dealer told JNS. “He sort of lived by his own rules, didn’t he, really? I never found out why he did this book.”
The artist was “very keen on Jewish items” and made many Jewish things, including menorahs, he said. “He was obviously very pro-semitic, but he was such a strange character. I don’t know what was going through his mind.”
Dalí must have liked Jews, or he wouldn’t have made the series on the tribes of Israel, Shapero said. “He wouldn’t exist today—a man like him, pretty much,” he said. “He’d be canceled within 30 seconds of opening his mouth. He was fascinated by Judaism.”
Shapero said he is showing and trying to sell the series, which celebrated the Jewish state, at a “more sensitive time,” although the “sort of peace at the moment” is helpful, he said.
“This is not going to be sold to somebody who is not of the religion,” he said.
The dealer told JNS that he supports the Jewish state, which he said faces widespread, global criticism. He noted that wars often involve bad actions and that the U.S. and British governments have faced criticism for the ways they have prosecuted wars in the past.
“It’s a tiny country surrounded by all of its enemies. If the Arabs lose a war, they’ll come back tomorrow. Israel loses a war, it’s game over,” he said. “We’re not on the same playing field as everyone else because Israel only gets one chance.”
He added that he is both proudly Jewish and Zionist, values Arabs as people and does a lot of business with them. “I’m pro-Zion,” he added.
