Published in 1989, the Max Inter Editions are finely crafted interpretive lithographs expertly translated by master chromists from Dalí’s original imagery.
Following years of severe Parkinson’s-like motor tremors (palsy), severe depression after Gala’s death in 1982, and injuries from a 1984 bedroom fire, Dalí was completely bedridden and tube-fed at his museum in Figueres. By the mid-to-late 1980s, severe motor tremors made controlled drawing or signing physically impossible. Legitimate editions published in the late 1980s relied almost entirely on contracts, licensing rights, or reproduction agreements negotiated years earlier (primarily during the 1970s or up to 1980) rather than real-time oversight from Dalí in 1989. In his final months, battling failing health and heart complications, Dalí spent his last days under medical care before passing away on January 23, 1989, at age 84.
Unbeknownst to the ailing master, his earlier agreements continued to operate in the background, allowing publishers to issue these final suites without any hands-on involvement from Dalí himself.
Enrique Sabater who served as Salvador Dalí’s intensely powerful business manager and personal secretary from 1968 to 1981 held Salvador Dali grandfathered contracts, but his business model differed completely from traditional corporate print publishers like Les Heures Claires or Phyllis Lucas.
As a replacement for of acting as a traditional fine art print publisher, Sabater—monopolized the global sale and licensing of Dalí’s conceptual reproduction rights. Early on he realized that real worth existed by the legal decoupling of an artwork’s physical ownership from its intellectual property rights. He weaponized this insight.
Sabater would then take that grandfathered corporate right and sub-license it to secondary publishers (like Max-Inter, Levine & Levine, or Benjamin Levi) to churn out thousands of lithographs, tapestries, or miniature sculptures based on a single painting. All these legally authorized by Dali.
During his tenure as secretary, Sabater allegedly organized roughly 50 complex global contracts for Salvador Dalí.
In 1980 right before he parted ways with Dali, he signed agreements that bypassed future estate intervention by directly purchasing the reproduction rights to a large array of Dalí’s two-dimensional images and three-dimensional sculpture concepts. He also legally purchased the rights to two of Dalí’s official signatures directly from Dalí.
Because these agreements were signed and bought while Dalí was still legally competent, they stood as ironclad, grandfathered properties. When Robert Descharnes’s Demart Pro Arte took over in 1986, they could not legally void Sabater’s personal commercial ownership of those rights; an ultimate stroke of legal independence. By the end of 1981, Dalí turned his legal affairs over to Robert Descharnes, but the 50 complex contracts Sabater had already finalized over the preceding decade remained legally bulletproof and grandfathered.
Unlike Les Heures Claires, which printed its own plates, Sabater acted as a high-level intellectual property broker. He used his grandfathered contracts to sell production rights to third parties, which completely bypassed and worked around Robert Descharnes and the Dalí Foundation. The most famous example of this is his multi-million-dollar relationship with art publisher Benjamin Levi. Levi bought sculpture and graphic rights directly from Sabater’s grandfathered 1980/1983 contracts. Using Sabater’s legal clearance, Levi copyrighted dozens of Dalí sculptures and two-dimensional images in the United States. This is exactly why a massive market of post-mortem Dalí bronze sculptures exists today.
Through Dalart NV, Sabater controlled the very paper and image licenses that fueled the global 1970s and 1980s Dalí lithograph boom. He was the ultimate back-room print broker. Throughout the late 1980s, Sabater used his corporate entities to authorize and sub-license restrikes and late-state editions of mid-career Dalí graphic suites. This directly fueled the late-1980s boom of authorized “after” lithographs. While Sabater wasn’t making new hand-signed prints in the late 1980s (as Dalí was cloistered away and too ill to sign), Sabater was a major supplier to the booming secondary market for 1970s pre-signed graphics. So essentially he successfully operated a parallel print empire that arguably out-monetized and out-distributed Robert Descharnes’s official estate efforts.
One of the main efforts was the Max Inter prints. Here are the structured details of those Authorized prints.
These prints were officially distributed by an entity called Max Inter, Ltd., with production runs predominantly executed in 1989—the exact year of Salvador Dalí’s passing. These are the last Authorized Dali’s executed while he was alive. Which make them unique and collectible. Instead of dealing directly with individual boutique galleries, Sabater’s corporate holding network sub-licensed the manufacturing rights to Vincenzo Salerno, a highly prominent master art printer based in Italy. To handle the commercial distribution, retail packaging, and legal liability of the 1989 release, an intermediary corporate shell named Max-Inter, Ltd. was established. Max-Inter did not negotiate with Salvador Dalí or Robert Descharnes. Instead, Max-Inter signed a distribution contract directly with Salerno’s printing firm, which was legally backed by the underlying Sabater image rights. Max-Inter authorized the creation of the uniform, plate-signed editions of 500. They used Salerno’s high-quality Italian presses to roll out the collection just as global demand peaked following Dalí’s death in January 1989. Much like the Les Heures Claires (Torino) retrospective executed by Dr. Giuseppe Albaretto; Max Inter operated entirely out of the Italian print ecosystem, bypassing the Parisian control held by Robert Descharnes and Atelier Jobin.
If you examine a Max Inter print, it bears a clear visual family resemblance to the other estate-authorized runs from the decade. Max Inter, Ltd. followed the exact same market logic as the other grandfathered corporate publishers by printing high-end interpretive lithographs (lithographies d’après) of Dalí’s absolute most famous career masterworks. Including the sizing, limited runs and facsimile/plate signatures. These large-format prints (traditionally measuring approximately 64 x 84 cm or 33 x 25 inches) feature a mechanical plate facsimile signature and standard pencil numbering: The Masterpiece Catalog (Limited Editions of 500) of 1989 includes celebrated imagery such as:
- The Businessman (Business Man at Work): One of the most sought-after and difficult-to-find individual titles from the Max Inter catalog, interpreting Dalí’s surrealist, multi-layered visual commentary on labor and corporate reality.
- Surrealist Bouquet: A vibrant interpretative lithograph capturing Dalí’s late-career obsession with morphing flora and hidden shapes.
- Transparent Horse: Meticulously color-separated by Salerno, this print isolates Dalí’s mid-career skeletal and translucent animal dreamscapes.
- Gala’s Dream: An intricate interpretive plate drawing straight from Dalí’s intensely personal, mid-century portraits of his wife and muse, Gala.
- The Hallucinogenic Toreador: A larger-format reproduction of Dalí’s monumental multi-layered optical illusion featuring repeating patterns of the Venus de Milo.
- Saint George and the Dragon: A highly detailed print reproducing Dalí’s classic surrealist reimagining of the mythic, spear-wielding knight.
- Don Quixote: A sharp interpretive printing of Dalí’s iconic, scratching lines depicting the literary knight-errant.
- The Picador: A companion piece to the Spanish bullfighting imagery, translating Dalí’s fluid ink washes into rich lithographic ink.
- The Duke of Orléans (Le Duc d’Orléans): A stark, regal interpretive portrait piece replicating Dalí’s mid-century classical portraiture style.
- Portrait of the Count-Duke of Olivares: A surreal homage to Velázquez, displaying Dalí’s mastery over classical Spanish iconography and historical figures.
- Tearful Watch (Tearful Soft Watch): This standalone piece functions as a direct close-up thematic variant to The Persistence of Memory, hyper-focusing exclusively on a solitary weeping, melting clock hanging from a branch.
- The Temptation of St. Anthony
- Marilyn-Mao (Marilyn Monroe / Mao Zedong Hybrid): One of the most sought-after late-career conceptual mashups, fusing the iconic features of Marilyn Monroe with the portrait matrix of Chairman Mao.
- The Persistence of Memory
- The Dentist: A darkly comic, highly stylized interpretive print reflecting Dalí’s mid-career surrealist fixation on clinical and anatomical themes.
- Gala Nude (Gala Nu): A color-separated rendering replicating Dalí’s famous classical nudes of his wife and muse viewed from behind.
- New York Skyline: A highly collectible on secondary decor platforms and specialized auction portals. It required Vincenzo Salerno’s specialized Italian presses to meticulously color-separate each layer.
- Earth Goddess: With its earthy and mineral tones it is collectible because it was based on the 1971 watercolor printed strictly as an uncolored or sepia/monochrome line lithograph.
- Alice in Wonderland (featuring Dalí’s iconic skipping-rope figure)
From an art-historical and valuation perspective, Enrique Sabeter’s Max Inter prints hold the exact same pedigree as the Les Heures Claires sheets and the 1986 Birkhäuser Kunstverlag(Basel)editions. They are Legitimate officially authorized, premium decorative estate reproductions or Retrospective Interpretive editions), not illegal modern forgeries or bootlegs. They were produced using legitimate transparency rights and master matrices. Robert Descharnes did not endorse them, as Max Inter was directly competing for the lucrative late-1980s commemorative market. They actually have the same facsimile signature used in the DeMart Pro Arte Lithographs.
Because of their larger size (64×84 cm), the Max Inter prints often command slightly more than smaller decorative prints, typically trading on secondary appraisal platforms or specialized auction venues for $300 to $700 depending on the frame and the specific image popularity.