The Mossos d'Esquadra has been able to recover two charcoal drawings by Salvador Dalí that were stolen a year ago from a private home in Barcelona. The investigations have been carried out by the Central Historical Heritage Unit of the regional police, with the collaboration of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation.
The Police have arrested three brothers, aged 50, 53 and 55, as perpetrators of the robbery, and two other people for participating in the reception of the stolen material. The first three entered pretrial detention and are now released with precautionary measures. The other two are free with charges. In the hands of this criminal group, five graphic works by Joan Miró have also been found, although their owner has not been identified. The three brothers are also responsible for robberies in Sant Cugat, Rubí and Premià de Mar.
When the brothers were arrested last May, only jewelry, old coins, watches, old objects and money from various thefts could be recovered. The trio had robbed several houses in the upper part of Barcelona and in Sant Cugat, always on weekends, when they knew that the owners were not there. Already then, the Mossos posted the recovered items on a web page so that they could be returned to their owners. But the main pieces were missing.
The two Dalí drawings were stolen from the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi home, most likely on Sunday, January 23, the day that precisely marked the 33rd anniversary of the painter's death. Montserrat Herrera Coromines, 84 years old, granddaughter of the politician Pere Coromines and niece of the philologist Joan Coromines, she reported the robbery when when she arrived at her home, after spending the weekend, she verified that the main door had been forced. Some jewelery was missing and… the two paintings, which had been hanging for years in one of the rooms, which immediately led the Mossos d'Esquadra to believe that it could be a robbery for hire and that the assailants had some kind of previous information. The two works, very little known, were valued by their owner at around 300,000 euros each.
These are two charcoal drawings by Dalí, from 1922, when he was only 18 years old, entitled Les sardanes de la festa major and Els pagesos. Dalí did them at the same time as two others for a luxury edition of the work Les gràcies de l'Empordà, by the politician Pere Coromines, a great friend of his father. Each one illustrated a chapter. The other two were dedicated to the “vi ranci” and the “donkeys of Biure”. However, the book was published without illustrations and they were only included in a paperback edition by Parsifal publishing house seventy years later.
They are very naive works, 43x43 cm. In one of them, the one dedicated to sardanas, Dalí included a character with a hat reminiscent of the actor Buster Keaton, whom he admired. A letter from Dalí to Pere Coromines is preserved, in which he tells him: “You cannot imagine with what love, and with what enthusiasm, I am drawing the ninots for the illustration of your book”.
When Dalí had his first exhibition in Barcelona, in 1925, at the Dalmau Galleries, Coromines bought him the oil painting number one in the catalogue: Portrait for 600 pesetas. Seated young woman, now exhibited at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid.
