Statue of Hitler is sold for 17.2 million dollars

Amount paid at auction for the sculpture of former Nazi leader kneeling is the largest ever levied by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. In the play, Hitler is represented as a child size and as if in prayer.

                        

A statue of the former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler sold for 17.2 million dollars at auction in New York and became a world record for the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.

The anticipated start of the season auction was opened on Sunday (08/05), with special sale of a sculpture of kneeling Hitler. The statue, wax and resin, is titled "He" and was established in 2001. The previous sales record for a work of Cattelan, 55, was 7.9 million.

In the play, Hitler comes represented the size of a child, kneeling, hands clasped, giving the idea of ​​being praying. "Hitler is pure fear. It is an image of a terrible pain. It hurts even pronounce his name. And yet that name won my memory. He lives in my head, even if it remains taboo," Cattelan said. "I wanted to destroy it [the play]. I changed my mind a thousand times every day."

Cattelan "challenged the representation of taboos, disguising evil incarnate under a cloak of innocence," said the vice president of Christie's, Loic Gouzer.

The statue displayed in a Cattelan retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2012, was the main work of a thematic exhibition entitled "Bound to Fail" ( "Destined to fail"), which brought together 39 pieces of modern and contemporary art, organized by Christie's auction house.