International

The remains of Salvador Dalí were exhumed on Thursday evening, almost three decades after his death, to help settle a long-running paternity claim from a 61-year-old fortune-teller who insists she is the Spanish artist’s only child.

Dalí, who died in 1989, is buried in a crypt beneath the museum he designed for himself in his home town of Figueres, Catalonia.

Once the last visitors of the day had left the building, the 1.5-tonne stone slab that rests above his grave was lifted so that experts could get to his body to take DNA samples from his bones and teeth.

“The biological specimens have been taken from Salvador Dali’s remains,” Catalonia’s high court said in a statement before midnight local time.

It said Dali’s coffin had been opened at 10:20 pm so that work could begin.

To guard the privacy of the enigmatic artist, awnings were put up around the museum to stop drones recording the exhumation.

The DNA recovered from the remains will then be taken to Madrid and compared with samples from Pilar Abel, who claims to be the result of a liaison her mother had with Dalí in 1955.Abel has been seeking to prove her parentage for the past 10 years and says the physical resemblance to the surrealist painter is so strong “the only thing I’m missing is a moustache”.

She says it was an open secret in her family that the artist was her biological father.

She told the Spanish newspaper El País that she first learned of her true paternity from the woman she said she had thought was her paternal grandmother.

Abel claims she told her: “I know you aren’t my son’s daughter and that you are the daughter of a great painter, but I love you all the same.” She also noted that her granddaughter was “odd just like your father”.

Under Spanish law, Abel would be heir to a quarter of Dalí’s fortune if the DNA supports her contention.

The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, which controls the artist’s lucrative estate, had unsuccessfully sought to fight the exhumation by appealing against a judge’s decision late last month to let it go ahead.As Dalí bequeathed his properties and fortune to the foundation and the Spanish state, Abel has brought her claims against both.

In 2007, Abel was granted permission to try to extract DNA from skin and hair and hair traces found clinging to Dalí’s death mask. However, the results proved inconclusive.

Another attempt to find DNA was made later the same year, using material supplied by the artist’s friend and biographer, Robert Descharnes.

Although Abel has claimed she never received the results of the second test, Descharnes’s son Nicholas told the Spanish news agency Efe in 2008 that he had learned from the doctor who conducted the tests that they were negative.

Abel told the Spanish news agency Europa Press that she was looking forward “to the truth being known once and for all”, adding: “I’m not nervous but happy and positive.”

The results of the latest DNA test are expected in a month or two.