DNA test results disprove a Spanish woman’s claim she is Salvador Dali’s daughter, the Dali Foundation said.
The foundation said that the court-ordered DNA test ascertained that Pilar Abel, a 61-year-old tarot card reader, has no biological relationship with the surrealist painter.
Abel has long alleged her mother had an affair with Dali and claimed she had the right to part of his vast estate. The foundation said it was happy the “absurd” claim had been resolved.
Abel claims her mother had an affair with Dali in the northeastern Spanish town of Figueres, where the artist was born and later returned with his Russian wife Gala. Dali was buried in the Dali Museum Theater of Figueres when he died at the age of 84 in 1989.
A court spokesman told The Associated Press the court has not made the test results public but has informed the parties in the lawsuit.
Calls to Abel’s lawyer were unanswered.
Dali’s remains were exhumed in July by forensic experts who opened his coffin in a sensitive operation that involved using pulleys to lift a 1.5-ton stone slab.
Lluis Penuelas Reixach, the secretary general of the Gala Dali Foundation, said Dali’s remains were well conserved, mummified after the embalming process applied 27 years ago.
Even Dali’s charismatic moustache had survived the passing of time and remained in “its classic shape of ten past ten,” Penuelas said, referring to the position of the hands of a clock.