Judge orders Salvador Dali´s body to be exhumed in paternity suit

A JUDGE has ordered the body of Catalonian surrealist painter Salvador Dali to be exhumed in order to obtain samples from it and perform a paternity test.

Dali, born in 1904, is famous for his surrealist works of art such as The Persistence of Memory (1931) and Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937) and is widely believed to be childless.

The painter who died in January 23 1989 is the subject of a paternity suit which was filed in 2015 and went to court late last year. Pilar Abel claims that her mother, who was a maid in Girona in the mid-1950s, had an affair with Dali and maintained a long term relationship and as a result Abel was born in 1956.

The object of the exhumation is to obtain samples from the body which can then be sent to the Institute of Toxicology for the testing. Pilar Abel has stated that both her mother and grandmother informed her that her paternal father was Dali and the woman is now trying to obtain proof and legal recognition of this.

The order has been to the judicial body in Figueres, Girona and is expected to be undertaken next month.