Moustache intact
Painter Salvador Dali’s remains exhumed for DNA tests.
Madrid: Surrealist master Salvador Dali’s (pic) trademark moustache is in perfect shape in its 10 past 10 position, the foundation that runs his estate said, a day after his remains were exhumed to settle a paternity claim.
Narcis Bardalet, who was responsible for embalming Dali’s body 28 years ago was at his grave the moment he was exhumed on Thursday night for DNA tests.
“It was a moving moment for him and for us,” Lluis Penuelas Reixach, the secretary-general of the Salvador Dali Foundation, told a press conference.
The arduous task of exhumation involved removing a slab weighing more than a tonne that covered his tomb at the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueras in northeastern Spain where the eccentric artist was born.
“When I took off the silk handkerchief, I was very emotional. I was eager to see him and I was absolutely stunned. It was like a miracle ... his moustache appeared at 10 past 10 exactly and his hair was intact,” Bardalet told Catalan radio station RAC1 yesterday morning.
Penuelas said DNA samples were taken from “his skin, nail and two long bones”.
A Madrid court last month granted Pilar Abel a DNA test to determine whether she is Dali’s child, as she claims.
Abel, a 61-year-old who long worked as a psychic in Catalonia, says her mother had a relationship with the artist when she worked in Cadaques, a picturesque Spanish port where the painter lived for years.
If Abel is confirmed as Dali’s only child, she could be entitled to 25% of the huge fortune and heritage of one of the most celebrated and pro- lific painters of the 20th century, according to her lawyer Enrique Blanquez.
But the Dali Foundation’s lawyer has indicated Abel could get a big bill if her claims are proven false.
“If Pilar Abel is not Dali’s daughter then we must ask this woman to reimburse the costs of the exhumation,” said Albert Segura.
Dali’s estate, which includes properties and hundreds of paintings, is entirely in the hands of the Spanish state.
The Foundation said it was worth
nearly 400mil (RM2bil) at the end of 2016.
Abel has already provided a saliva sample for comparison and the results are expected within a matter of weeks. — AFP