A Madrid court ordered the body of famous Catalan surrealist Salvador Dalí exhumed last month after years of legal action by the painter’s alleged daughter, Pilar Abel, who is seeking to gather genetic material for a paternity test. The 62-year-old psychic’s DNA test at the Instituto Nacional de Toxicología y Ciencias Forenses de Madrid has been scheduled for July 11, according to Europa Press. The trial is set for September 18.
Abel, born in 1956, claims Dalí had an affair with her mother in 1955 while working as a domestic servant in Cadaqués. Dalí lived with his wife, manager, and muse Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, a.k.a. Gala, in Port Lligat, a village near Cadaqués, at the time. Abel began the legal battle to exhume Dalí’s body in 2015 after failing to receive results comparing her DNA to skin and hair salvaged from the painter’s death mask. Dalí has written that his sexual activity was limited to voyeurism, masturbation, and cuckoldry. A judge determined that exhuming Dalí from the tomb is the only way to resolve the case.
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If Abel wins the paternity suit, she will gain access to Dalí’s famous name and the ability to claim his works and property, which amount to 25% of his estate. A date has not yet been set for Dalí’s body to be removed from its final resting place at the Dalí Theatre and Museum in Figueres, Spain. The Dalí Foundation is preparing to appeal the exhumation order.
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