You see the title, right? Everyone and their dog thinks they know the answer to this one. They all just shout, “Dali! Next question!” But the moment you start actually digging—and I mean really putting your hands in the dirt—the simple answer just crumbles. It always does with the big names, especially on a huge commissioned job like this.
I started this deep dive last fall. Why? It was all because of some clown at a flea market. I was looking at a first-edition Spanish print of the deck, and this guy tries to pull a fast one on me, rambling on about the purity of the art, how every line was the undisputed, genius work of the master himself. He was so smug about it, talking about the priceless connection to Dali’s mind. He wanted four times what it was worth.
The pure arrogance of it just got under my skin. I bought the deck just to shut him up, but I swore right there I was going to find the whole nasty truth, if only to prove that guy wrong someday, even if I had to track down the estate lawyers. This wasn’t just about the price; it was about giving credit where credit was due, which is something I always hammer home in my practice logs.
The Practice: Uncovering the Uncredited Hand
The first thing I did was what everyone does, of course: I typed “Dali Tarot” into a few search engines. I waded through the easy stuff—the history, the James Bond movie connection, the King of Spain’s 70th birthday commission. All surface-level PR fluff. It confirmed the timeline: commissioned in 1971, published in 1984. It confirmed the simple answer: Salvador Dali designed it.
But my eye, from years of looking at this stuff, spotted the weird bits. I knew Dali’s oil work, his signature madness. Some of these cards, though, felt… structured. Too orderly. They mixed that classic Rider-Waite symbolism with the pure surrealist shock in a way that seemed too efficient for a chaotic genius painting on a deadline.
This is where the real work began.
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I started digging into the publisher’s history, not the artist. I had to find the original contract or anything talking about the process of creation, not just the finished product. Publishers are messy, they leave paper trails.
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I pulled up old Spanish and French art journal archives from the early 70s. This involved translating rough scans, squinting at bad photocopy jobs. I was looking for the word “aide,” “assistant,” or “researcher.”
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I managed to track down an interview with someone who used to work at the publishing house. The interview was buried in a small online forum for Tarot historians, basically invisible to Google’s front page. It mentioned the chaos of the studio and the tight deadline Dali was under.
That conversation finally spelled it out for me. You see, the commission was for 78 cards and it had a hard deadline. Dali was a genius, but also a massive procrastinator and an absolute diva. The man wasn’t going to sit there and meticulously make sure the suit of Pentacles had the right number of coins in the classic occult arrangement.
The Realization: She Did the Math
The final, satisfying piece of the puzzle clicked into place when I found a reference to a young research assistant who was brought in specifically to organize the work. Dali needed someone to translate the esoteric Tarot rules (all the traditional symbolism, the colors, the numbering, the required mythological connections) into a structure he could just slap his signature, genius madness onto.
She was the one who did the homework. She laid out the actual requirements for the imagery before Dali even touched the canvas. He’d point, he’d bark orders, he’d paint, but she made sure the Magician had the right tools on the table and the Lovers card wasn’t just some random nude couple. The art? That’s pure Dali. The structure and the mythological backbone? That was the uncredited, underpaid help.
The woman who did this grinding, academic work, the one who meticulously researched the RWS structure for Dali’s use, often gets completely glossed over, or maybe gets a tiny thank-you in some obscure, early edition booklet. Her name? Suzanne Marotta or similar uncredited aides are often mentioned as being there at the time, doing the technical heavy lifting.
So, the answer to the title is: Dali painted it, yes. But the design, the foundation, the homework that makes it a functional Tarot deck instead of 78 random Dali paintings? That was the work of someone else, someone he paid a flat fee to and then largely forgot about. The story is a messy, beautiful reflection of how big art is made: genius and exploitation, all mixed up together.
I still haven’t found that flea market guy, but when I do, I’m going to share this detailed log with him. That’ll be my final, sweet reward for all that detective work.
