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# Dalí's Mustache Discovered Intact After 28 Years
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/dalis-mustache-discovered-intact-after-28-years/
- Published: 2017-07-21T18:02:49.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:40:59.000Z
- Description: On Thursday night, Dalí's body was exhumed from his crypt in the Salvador Dalí Theater-Museum so that DNA could be collected to carry out a paternity test.
- Author: Benjamin Sutton
- Tags: In Brief, Salvador Dali, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:30(2016, 2017, part 3)

![Salvador Dalí in 1972 (photo by Allan Warren, via Wikimedia Commons)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/07/salvador-dali-exhumed-mustache.jpg)

Salvador Dalí in 1972 (photo by Allan Warren, via Wikimedia Commons)

Last night, the body of Surrealist artist [Salvador Dalí](https://hyperallergic.com/dalis-doppelgangers-and-ghosts/) was exhumed from his tomb inside the [Salvador Dalí Theater-Museum](https://www.salvador-dali.org/en/museums/?ref=hyperallergic.com) in Figueres, Spain, so that DNA could be collected to carry out a paternity test. The process began at 8pm, by 10:20pm his coffin had been raised and opened, and his body was back at rest in its crypt by 9am today, when the museum reopened.

![In the atrium of the Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum, awnings were erected to prevent the public from seeing Dalí's body being exhumed from his crypt. (photo courtesy the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/07/salvador-dali-exhumed-museum-interior.jpg)

In the atrium of the Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum, awnings were erected to prevent the public from seeing Dalí’s body being exhumed from his crypt. (photo courtesy the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí)

While we must now await the result of the paternity test that was [the impetus for the exhuming](https://hyperallergic.com/in-surreal-twist-court-orders-dalis-body-exhumed-for-paternity-test/) — to see if tarot card reader Maria Pilar Abel Martínez is indeed the artist’s heir and therefore entitled to a share of his very valuable estate — one surprising fact came to light the moment his casket was opened: The shape and position of Dalí’s mustache has not changed since he was buried 28 years ago.

“The mustache kept its classic 10-past-10 position,” said Lluís Peñuelas, the secretary general of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, which runs the museum, [according](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/world/europe/salvador-dali-exhumed-paternity.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) to the *New York Times*. “Finding this out was a very emotional moment.”

It was especially emotional for Narcís Bardalet, the embalmer who prepared Dalí’s body in 1989 and was on-hand for last night’s surreal procedure, describing the persistence of the waxy mustache as “a miracle.” He [told](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jul/20/salvador-dali-remains-exhumed-paternity-case?ref=hyperallergic.com) the *Guardian* that Dalí’s body had become so dry and hard that examiners had to use an electric saw to collect a bone sample. Bardalet added: “Salvador Dalí is forever.”

![In the atrium of the Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum, awnings were erected to prevent the public from seeing Dalí's body being exhumed from his crypt. (photo courtesy the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/07/salvador-dali-exhumed-museum-exterior.jpg)

In the atrium of the Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum, awnings were erected to prevent the public from seeing Dalí’s body being exhumed from his crypt. (photo courtesy the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí)

Ahead of the procedure, tents and awnings were erected inside the museum’s glass-roofed atrium to prevent anyone from using a drone to capture images or footage of the exhuming.

Despite complying with the court order to have Dalí’s body exhumed, the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation “considers the exhumation performed on Salvador Dalí’s remains entirely inappropriate,” according to [a statement released today](https://www.salvador-dali.org/en/services/press/press-releases/9532dbd5-c2eb-4317-a897-7d6bd9810ecb/information-on-the-exhumation-of-salvador-dali-s-remains?ref=hyperallergic.com). “There is no evidence that claimant Pilar Abel Martínez’s claim has any legal basis, as the only grounds provided constitute a notarial statement from a woman who claims to be a friend of the mother, stating that the latter told her that her daughter’s father was Salvador Dalí.”

Under the terms of Spanish law, Martínez would be entitled to a quarter of Dalí’s estate if the DNA test supports her claim.

![A press conference outside the Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, on July 20 (photo courtesy the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2017/07/salvador-dali-exhumed-conference.jpg)

A press conference outside the Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, on July 20 (photo courtesy the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí)