The former advertising supremo who, lest we forget, guided the enemies of Communism to power in 1979, followed his brother Charles by acquiring a derivative statue of enormous proportions and debatable artistic merit for a large amount of money at Sotheby’s Sussex on May 25.
While not in the same league as Damien Hirst’s Humbrol man for which the Saatchi Gallery reportedly paid £1m last year, the 13ft (3.96m) high model of the Marxist hero at least had a less contentious provenance. During the 1950s the Czech artist Rejher won a famous competition – to model this statue for the city of Sorkolov. In the wholesale iconoclasm that followed the collapse of Communism in 1989 this statue was removed from its plinth and joined a long queue of the like waiting to be sold by Eastern European entrepreneurs to Western collectors. The Czech government recently clamped down on this practice, but not before this statue of Lenin was shipped out of the country by an American businessman.
With a scrap value estimated at £3000 and transport costs of £4000, offering the statue at Sotheby’s was a gamble, but it paid off when Mr Saatchi bid £16,000.
Lenin makes a profit thanks to Saatchi cash
AS Roman generals used to parade the heathen idols of vanquished tribes before the populae urbis, so this monumental bronze figure of Lenin, pictured, will provide an entertaining diversion for the guests at Maurice Saatchi’s garden parties in Sussex this summer.
