To Help Launch Film : Disney Will Unveil Unused Dali Artwork

Walt Disney Productions will unveil this summer a series of sketches and paintings by Salvador Dali that were commissioned in 1946 by Walt Disney for an animated film that never was produced, the studio announced Friday.

The surrealistic drawings by the Spanish master, intended to act as a “map” for illustrators of the film that wasn’t produced, will be used by the Burbank-based studio to launch “The Black Cauldron,” its first new animated film in four years, Disney officials said.

The valuable drawings have never been exhibited, although several were reproduced in a magazine in the late 1970s, the officials said.

The collection consists of renderings of characters and scenes that Dali envisioned for a six-minute segment of the film. The segment, titled “Destino,” was based on a Mexican ballad and would have portrayed music and dancing in a “surrealistic style,” said Paula Sigman, assistant archivist for the studio.

The film was conceived in the tradition of the Disney classic “Fantasia” and would have consisted of several unrelated segments, Sigman said. The project eventually was abandoned by the studio, probably because of its lack of marketability in an age of feature-length films, she said.

Disney commissioned Dali to do the designs shortly after the artist completed several massive canvases used in dream sequences in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1945 film “Spellbound,” said Arlene Ludwig, publicity director for Disney Productions.

The collection, stored in the studio archives for nearly 40 years, includes “story board” sketches and paintings, Sigman said. The works were supposed to illustrate the mood of the segment for the Disney illustrators and to determine the sequence of action, she said.

Disney officials disputed reports that the collection had recently been recovered after being misplaced, lost or ignored by the studio.

Aside from their mutual connection to animated films, the Dali works have nothing to do with the “The Black Cauldron,” a fantasy adventure about a boy who dreams of becoming a famous warrior.

“With all the interest in the paintings, we thought we could set up an exhibit of Disney cells that focused on Dali,” Ludwig said. A cell is a sketch or painting. “It would be part of some very major plans we have for launching ‘The Black Cauldron.’ ” Details of the exhibit and publicity for the movie were not disclosed.

Sigman said she was unable to describe the illustrations because they are “quite surrealistic” and “very Dali-esque.” Dali, 80, who lives near Barcelona, Spain, is renowned for his flamboyant style and use of hallucinatory images and grotesque shapes.