In surrealist twist, Dali exhumed 27 years after his death in paternity lawsuit
Salvador Dali’s eccentric artistic and personal history has taken yet another bizarre turn with the exhumation of his embalmed remains in order to find genetic samples that could settle whether one of the founding figures of surrealism fathered a girl decades ago.
Pilar Abel, a 61- year- old tarot card reader, claims her mother had an affair with Dali while working as a domestic helper in the northeastern Spanish town of Figueres, where the artist was born and later returned with his Russian wife Gala.
Catalonia’s High Court said yesterday that biological samples were found 27 years after Dali’s body was embalmed and interred in a museum dedicated to the painter’s memory also in Figueres. The samples need to travel to a legal medicine lab in Madrid for analysis, which could take weeks, officials said.
The sensitive exhumation by a team of forensic experts followed two decades of court battles by Abel. In June, a Madrid judge finally ruled that a DNA test should be performed to find out whether her allegations were true.
“I am amazed and very happy because justice may be delivered,” she had told the Associated Press when the judge ruled in her favour.
Abel said a desire to honour her mother’s memory was motivating her paternity lawsuit.
“I have fought a long time for this and I think I have the right to know.”
Her lawyer, Enrique Blanquez, said a judicial victory for Abel would give her a chance to seek one- fourth of Dali’s estate in further lawsuits, in accordance with inheritance laws in Spain’s Catalonia region.
Dali and his wife had no children of their own although Gala — whose name at birth was Elena Ivanovna Diakonova and who died seven years before the painter — had a daughter from an earlier marriage to French poet Paul Eluard.
Upon his death in 1989 at age 84, Dali bestowed his estate to the Spanish state. His body was buried in his hometown’s local theatre, which had been rebuilt to honour the artist in the 1960s. The building now hosts the Dali Theatre Museum.
After the gates of the premises closed yesterday, a 1.5- tonne stone slab was removed to open the crypt with Dali’s remains.
In order to respect the privacy of the artist’s remains and to lessen the risk of contaminating any biological samples, only five people — a judge, three forensic experts and an assistant — stayed during the hour and 20 minutes that the coffin stayed open.
It remains to be seen if the chemicals used for preserving the artist’s body have damaged his genetic information, said Narcis Bardalet, the forensic expert who embalmed Dali back in 1989.
Regional Catalan officials had previously told the AP that experts planned to remove four teeth, some nails and the marrow of a long bone, if the corpse’s condition allowed it.
A coffin from a funeral home was delivered earlier in the day to the museum premises.
The public foundation that manages Dali’s estate failed to halt the exhumation but convinced the judge to reschedule it out of visiting hours. Extra measures were taken to prevent images of the process.
A marquee inside the museum’s glass dome was installed to avoid any possible photography or video taken from drones.
Dali’s paternity lawsuit was a topic of discussion yesterday among the lines of visitors at the museum.
“I think the woman has the right to know who her father is,” said 33 yearold Miguel Naranjo. “But I think it is surreal that they have to unearth his body after such a long time.”
Since the judge ordered the exhumation many have raised doubts about Abel’s story. In an article publi shed by Ian Gibson last month in Spanish daily El Pais, the Dali biographer concluded that the artists’ complex sexual appetites raised serious doubts about the existence of any offspring.
Among the sceptics is Joan Vehi, who started working as a carpenter for Dali and his wife, Gala, but with the time became a close friend of the couple and one of the painter’s personal photographers.
“I’ve never heard of this woman, Dali never talked to me about her, and now suddenly all this fuss,” Vehi said yesterday.
“This is self- publicity.”