Dali work expected to fetch 10 Million

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 75-year-old masterwork by Surrealist painter Salvador Dali is expected to fetch $10 million or more when it hits the auction block next month, Sotheby's said on Wednesday.

"Printemps necrophilique," a 1936 work by the Spanish master which depicts a seated male and a standing female in an eerily realistic landscape, has a presale estimate of $8 million to $12 million when it is offered at the May 2 sale of Impressionist and Modern Art. It was last been on the market about 15 years ago.

"Surrealism is the last great movement of 20th-century modernism to be fully appreciated in the marketplace," said Simon Shaw, Sotheby head of Impressionist and modern art in New York, referring to recent records.

Dali's "Portrait de Paul Eluard" set a record for a Surrealist work when it sold for $21.7 million at Sotheby's in February 2011, while Ernst's "The Stolen Mirror" soared to $16.3 million, or more than three times the estimate, smashing the artist's record of $2.67 million at Christie's last fall.