DNA from the artist’s exhumed remains has shown he is not the father of Pilar Abel, who claimed to be his heir.

The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation has announced that DNA tests have disproved Pilar Abel’s claim that she is the daughter of surrealist painter Salvador Dalí. Dalí’s body was exhumed in July, as the result of a court order, to facilitate the testing which was to settle Abel’s paternity claim.

Abel, a tarot card reader from the town of Figueres where Dalí was born, has spent the last ten years trying to establish herself as the artist’s child and heir. Abel says that her mother met the artist in the 1950s, while working as a servant in the house of friends of Dalí and that the two had an affair which resulted in her own birth in 1956.

Abel established a legal paternity claim in 2015, presenting the anecdotal evidence of family members and friends, and demanding the right to exhume the body of her supposed father in order to take a conclusive DNA test. She brought the case against the Spanish state and the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, who were the beneficiaries of Dalí’s 600 million dollar estate...