Body of Salvador Dali Exhumed For Paternity Test

The body of Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali was exhumed Thursday, following a controversial Madrid court ruling in favor of a woman who claims to be his daughter, according to CNN Style.

Dali once said, "Great geniuses produce mediocre children, and I don't want to go through that experience." But Maria Pilar Abel doesn't think he kept that word.

The 61-year-old woman says her mother, who was a maid in one of Dali's seasonal homes in Port Lligat, maintained a clandestine relationship with the artist. Abel wants a paternity test.

A stone slab had to be removed before forensic scientists could access the body, which has been resting in The Dali Theatre and Museum in Figueres, Spain since Dali's death in 1989.
They collected samples of DNA from the hair and teeth of the embalmed body, Abel's lawyer says. Results are expected within two weeks. Abel tried to complete a paternity test in 2007 with DNA from belongings her alleged father left behind, but results proved inconclusive. The Madrid Supreme Court agreed there were no other reliable remains.

It stated the objective of the exhumation was "to get samples of his remains to determine whether he is the biological father of a woman from Girona (in northeastern Spain) who filed a claim to be recognized as the daughter of the artist."

The Salvador Dali Foundation which runs the museum vowed to appeal the court ruling back in June, but to no avail.
In a statement, the Foundation said that, while it respected the court's decisions and cooperated with the exhumation, it "considers the exhumation performed on Salvador Dali's remains entirely inappropriate."

"There is no evidence that claimant Pilar Abel Martinez's claim has any legal basis, as the only grounds...