For several months now, the estate of surrealist master Salvador Dali has been embroiled in the art-world equivalent of an episode of Maury after a 61-year-old woman came forward to claim that she is Dali’s illegitimate daughter. Dali and his wife had no children, so if Maria Pilar Abel Martinez’s claim had been correct, she would have been entitled to a share of Dali’s no-doubt substantial estate, currently controlled by the Spanish government. Martinez sued the Spanish government in 2015, and after a series of appeals Dali was exhumed to obtain a DNA sample last month, leading to the morbidly whimsical discovery that his famous handlebar mustache remains intact.
Well, the test results have come back, and it looks like they dug up ol’ Salvador for nothing. As the BBC reports, the Dali Foundation issued a statement earlier today that simply said, “the DNA tests show that Pilar Abel is not Dali’s daughter,” presumably followed by some emphatic jumping up and down and yelling. Martinez has yet to comment on the results, but the Dali Foundation has previously stated that it intended to send her a bill for the exhumation should the results come back negative.
