Bonhams brings Salvador Dalí's 1939 monumental Bacchanale to Paris auction.

Paris is preparing to host a new edition of The Surrealist Sale, the annual event that Bonhams dedicates to Surrealism. The auction will be held on Thursday, March 26, 2026 at the Avenue Hoche venue and will feature a selection of paintings and works on paper signed by French, Belgian, and Italian masters. Taking center stage is a work of exceptional size and complexity: Salvador Dalí’s Bacchanale , executed in 1939 and estimated at between 200,000 and 300,000 euros.

“For the fourth consecutive year, Bonhams is celebrating the fascinating world of Surrealism with a dedicated spring auction in Paris,” says Emilie Millon, head of Bonhams’ Impressionist and Modern Art department in Paris. "The sale will feature works by many of Surrealism’s most innovative and prominent figures, from Francis Picabia to Man Ray, highlighting the impact and legacy of the movement. We are delighted to offer at auction Bacchanale, a set design, but most importantly, the largest painting created by Salvador Dalí for the New York Opera House, a priceless dream that can become a reality for any collector."

Coming from a major private collection, Bacchanale is a set design consisting of thirteen panels, considered the largest pictorial work created by Dalí for the theater. The artist conceived it for the New York Opera House, where the ballet debuted on November 9, 1939. Dalí called the project his first paranoid-critical ballet, stating that he condensed in it his own idea of a total work of art: he wrote the libretto, designed the sets and costumes, and personally oversaw the definition of many details.

The production involved leading figures on the international stage. The choreographer and director of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo Léonide Massine collaborated on the ballet, while Coco Chanel took care of some of the costumes and accessories. The score was based on an adaptation of the overture from Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser. Dalí created the ad sketch (also called a maquette) between March and May 1939; the set design was then produced between late May and August in the Ballets Russes workshops in Monte Carlo, under the direction of Alexandre Schervachidze. The artist personally supervised the final curtain and backdrop, incorporating imaginative elements such as the figure of a lying faceless woman, a motif also present in the painting L’Énigme sans fin of the same year. Despite difficulties related to the outbreak of the European conflict, which prevented Dalí from being present at the premiere and led Chanel not to send his own creations, the show was successful.

Structurally, Bacchanale appears as a monumental construction: thirteen large elements, a backdrop and four sets of canvases for a total size of more than twenty by thirty meters. It is the largest work painted by Dalí, consisting of canvases executed with almost photographic precision and supplemented by three-dimensional elements. The central motif is the Mount of Venus, surmounted by a large swan, a symbol of sin and desire, originally built on a now-lost wooden frame.

In recent years the setting has returned to public attention. In 2023 it was exhibited for the first time at the Salón de Arte Moderno in Madrid; in 2024 it was presented at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, as a backdrop for ten performances curated by Jaime Vallaure and Tania Arias; and in 2025 it was finally staged at the Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan. Alongside Dalí’s work, the auction will feature works by other protagonists of the Surrealist movement. Among them isTête en l’airdella by Belgian painter Jane Graverol, a relevant figure in post-World War II Surrealism, active in Brussels avant-garde circles and in dialogue with artists such as René Magritte. The painting, estimated between 25,000 and 35,000 euros, proposes an image of spiritual elevation and dreamlike suspension, in which the body goes through a transformation that blurs the boundary between reality and imagination, according to a compositional construction marked by symbolism and formal precision.

An important nucleus also concerns Francis Picabia, an author with a heterogeneous production characterized, especially in the 1940s, by a continuous transition between figuration and abstraction. The catalog features eleven paintings and works on paper, including La Polonaise, oil on panel from 1940, estimated at between 200,000 and 300,000 euros and from the collection of Olga Picabia. The work was exhibited in 1984 at the Kunsthaus Zurich and later in Nice in 1991. Also for sale are Sans titre (Masque), oil on signed cardboard, with an estimate between 150,000 and 250,000 euros, and the sheet Sans titre (Femme de profile au chignon), signed, inscribed and dated “Francis Picabia Paris 19 mars 1944,” valued between 10,000 and 12,000 euros.

Bonhams brings Salvador Dalí's 1939 monumental Bacchanale to Paris auction.

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