An oil painting bought for a mere €150 (£120) from a dusty antiques shop in northeastern Spain 26 years ago has been discovered to be the earliest surrealist work by Salvador Dali, art experts confirmed on Thursday.
The colourful scene - depicting angels swirling in the sky around a womblike cloud formation above a flaming volcano - caught the eye of Tomeu L'Amo, a young art historian as he browsed canvases in a cluttered antique shop in the city of Girona, northeastern Spain in 1988.
He suspected it may have been an early work by Catalan artist Salvador Dali but the shopkeeper insisted that was impossible as it bore an inscription with the date 1896, eight years before Dali was born.
