Hitler Sculpture Sold For £12m At Auction

A sculpture of Hitler on his knees has sold at a New York auction for $17.2m (£12m), a record for Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.

The wax and resin figure, called Him, depicts Hitler as the size of a boy, on his knees, and dressed in a grey woollen suit.

Mr Cattelan - who finished the work in 2001 - has said of the sculpture: "I wanted to destroy it myself. I changed my mind a thousand times, every day.

But the artist who created ‘the image of terrible pain’ admitted he wanted to see it destroyed.

Dressed in a grey woolen suit, the sculpture shows a kneeling Adolf Hitler clasping his hands and looking up.

Cattelan who constantly debated whether to destroy the sculpture, said it even hurt him ‘to pronounce his name.’

To Cattelan’s surprise, the sculpture beat its sale estimate of $10m to $15m at auction house, Christie’s.

It was featured in the Bound to Fail auction and labelled ‘difficult’ by organisers.

"Hitler is everywhere, haunting the spectre of history; and yet he is unmentionable, irreproducible, wrapped in a blanket of silence." 

The sale took place at Christie’s as part of the Bound to Fail auction of "rule-breaking artists"