FIGUERES, Spain (AP) – Salvador Dali’s eccentric artistic and personal history took yet another bizarre turn Thursday 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 where he had moved back to with his Russian wife Gala.
After two decades of court battles, a Madrid judge last month granted Abel a DNA test to find out whether her allegations are true.
“I am amazed and very happy because justice may be delivered,” she told The Associated Press at the time, adding that a desire to honor 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.