DNA test 'proves' woman behind Dali exhumation is not his daughter
Ana Lazaro Verde
MADRID, Ana Lazaro Verde (dpa) - A DNA test conducted on the remains of Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali has concluded that a woman who made a paternity claim is not his daughter.
"These samples prove that Pilar Abel is not the biological daughter of Salvador Dali," the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation said Wednesday of the claim by Abel, a 61-year-old tarot card reader.
It further said that the report by the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences "puts an end to an absurd and artificial controversy, and that the figure of Salvador Dali remains definitively excluded from totally groundless claims."
Abel has since 2007 been claiming that she is Dali's child, and is seeking legal recognition as his daughter - which could also entitle her to portions of his property and rights to his art.
She says her mother was employed in Dali's household in the mid-1950s and the two had a secret love affair. Dali would have been married to his muse Gala at the time.
In July, forensic scientists removed samples of hair, nail and bone from Dali's body following an exhumation in order to carry out the DNA test, which was ordered by a Spanish judge the previous month.
A comparison between the biological samples of the Spanish artist (1904-89) and the tarot card reader "allow for the exclusion of Salvador Dali as the biological father," the foundation said.
"At no time has there been any evidence of the veracity of an alleged paternity," the foundation said in a statement, in which it said the test result was not surprising.
"The unusual and unjustified court decision to practise the exhumation is confirmed as totally inadequate and disproportionate, showing its utter inadmissibility and the uselessness of the costs and damages caused," it added.
The results of the test were expected to be Abel's principal argument when she appears in a paternity trial set for September 18.
Dali's remains will soon be returned to his coffin, the foundation said. He is buried in the Dali Theatre and Museum in Figueres, a city in Spain's north-eastern Catalonia region,
Revered for his eccentric works, such as the melting clocks in the 1931 painting "The Persistence of Memory," and instantly recognizable for his signature handlebar moustache, Dali died of heart failure in 1989 at the age of 84. He was thought to be childless.
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Abel has since 2007 been claiming that she is Dali's child, and is seeking legal recognition as his daughter - which could also entitle her to portions of his property and rights to his art.
She says her mother was employed in Dali's household in the mid-1950s and the two had a secret love affair. Dali would have been married to his muse Gala at the time.
In July, forensic scientists removed samples of hair, nail and bone from Dali's body following an exhumation in order to carry out the DNA test, which was ordered by a Spanish judge the previous month.
A comparison between the biological samples of the Spanish artist (1904-89) and the tarot card reader "allow for the exclusion of Salvador Dali as the biological father," the foundation said.
"At no time has there been any evidence of the veracity of an alleged paternity," the foundation said in a statement, in which it said the test result was not surprising.
"The unusual and unjustified court decision to practise the exhumation is confirmed as totally inadequate and disproportionate, showing its utter inadmissibility and the uselessness of the costs and damages caused," it added.
The results of the test were expected to be Abel's principal argument when she appears in a paternity trial set for September 18.
Dali's remains will soon be returned to his coffin, the foundation said. He is buried in the Dali Theatre and Museum in Figueres, a city in Spain's north-eastern Catalonia region,
Revered for his eccentric works, such as the melting clocks in the 1931 painting "The Persistence of Memory," and instantly recognizable for his signature handlebar moustache, Dali died of heart failure in 1989 at the age of 84. He was thought to be childless.
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