Italian police seize 21 Salvador Dali works at exhibition believed to be fake

Italian police on Wednesday seized 21 works attributed to Salvador Dali from an exhibition in the city of Parma after questions arose about their authenticity.

"The works in question — including tapestries, drawings, engravings, and various objects — were being circulated and exhibited in the current Parma exhibition, and 21 of them were falsely attributed to master artist Salvador Dali," a police statement said.

The Spanish organization Fundacion Gala-Salvador Dali, which manages the artist's intellectual property, raised concerns about whether the works were genuine. Some of the pieces had previously been shown in a museum in Rome, but early checks found anomalies.

The pieces were on display at Dali, Between Art and Myth at Palazzo Tarasconi, which had only been open for a few days before the seizure. Police from the Carabinieri Unit for the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Rome carried out the confiscation under a judge's order.

The investigation is being coordinated by Rome prosecutors.