Exhumed Dali’s trademark moustache still in perfect shape
Salvador Dali’s famous moustache remains in a perfect state, its handlebars “marking (the time of) 10 past 10” as he wished, witnesses to the surrealist artist’s exhumation for DNA testing said yesterday.
Narc´ıs Bardalet, Dali’s embalmer, said upon opening the crypt, his body was found to be exactly as when it was interred 28 years ago.
The Spanish master was raised from his tomb in his home town of Figueres late at night in a move to settle the paternity claim of a fortune teller who says she is his love child.
Pilar Abel, 61, also from Figueres, has been fighting for more than a decade to prove she is Dali’s daughter, claiming to have learned from her mother and grandmother that she was the product of an affair with the married artist.
In June Abel won a court order to exhume Dali’s body, a Madrid judge ruling there was no other way settle the claim.
The artist’s two tibias have been extracted as well as nails and teeth, and have been taken to Madrid for testing before being replaced, Lluis Penuelas, secretary of the GalaSalvador Dali Foundation, said.
He stressed the foundation, which administers Dali’s estate, regards the exhumation as “inappropriate” and to Abel’s claim as “baseless”.
Cranes lifted the hefty tombstone from the crypt beneath the stage in the artist’s self-designed TheatreMuseum. The operation took place at night, with media banned and the building shielded to prevent drones spying.
Just 15 people were present and all phones and cameras were prohibited.
— Daily Telegraph