María Pilar Abel Martínez, the Spanish woman who believed Salvador Dali was her father, is not the surrealist artist’s daughter, according to DNA test results.
The tarot card reader, who was born in 1956, says her mother had an affair with Salvador Dalí during the year before her birth.
A judge in Madrid agreed the artist’s body could be exhumed for testing in June.
Now the Dali Foundation says the tests carried out have conclusively proved the two are not related.
Salvador Dali’s Body Exhumed for Paternity Test
Salvador Dali’s Body to Be Exhumed to Obtain Samples for Paternity Suit
The foundation, which manages the artist’s estate, said in a statement on September 6 – six weeks after Dali’s body was exhumed from a crypt in a museum dedicated to his life and work in Figueres: “The DNA tests show that Pilar Abel is not Dali’s daughter.”
Had they been related, María Pilar Abel Martinez would have had a claim on part of Salvador Dali’s estate, which he left to the Spanish state following his death in 1989 at the age of 85.
A number of Salvador Dali experts had raised their eyebrows at the claim before his body was exhumed, with biographer Ian Gibson noting the artist’s own claim of: “I’m impotent, you’ve got to be impotent to be a great painter.”
It is not known how María Pilar Abel Martinez, who had been told from an early age she was the Salvador Dali’s daughter, has responded to the news.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQM6q5zWwpg
