PARMA, Oct 1, 2025 — Carabinieri art police on Wednesday seized 21 works suspected of being falsely attributed to Salvador Dalí from an exhibition in Parma.
The items included tapestries, drawings and engravings. They were part of the show “Dalí: Between Art and Myth”, which opened at Palazzo Tarasconi on Saturday.
The Fundación Gala ‒ Salvador Dalí, which manages the artist’s intellectual property, alerted authorities after spotting the same pieces at an earlier exhibition in Rome. Following the report, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rome ordered their seizure, which was carried out by the Carabinieri’s Cultural Heritage Protection unit.
The confiscated works will now undergo checks to determine authenticity.
A Wider Pattern
Dalí’s works are among the most commonly forged, together with those of Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani. Italian investigators have dealt with several high-profile cases in recent years.
Earlier this year, art police uncovered a cache of forged Modigliani paintings in Tuscany, while in 2024 they seized fake ancient coins destined for international sale. Such operations highlight Italy’s continuing battle against the trafficking of both modern fakes and looted antiquities.
The Parma exhibition presented around 80 works attributed to Dalí, drawn from private collections in Italy and Belgium. Alongside engravings and tapestries, it included ceramics, lithographs, photographs and books.
It is not yet clear how the seizure will affect the show, scheduled to run until February 2026.
