The buyer, a client of art dealer Larry Gagosian, is expected to donate the work to the recently refurbished Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Made in 1991 using a tiger shark bought from Australia for £6000, and commissioned by Charles Saatchi for £50,000, the sculpture - officially titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living but now forever known as the pickled shark - is the most celebrated of a string of controversial works to emerge from the YBA group. It had been hoped that it might end up in the Tate Modern although Saatchi enjoys famously strained relations with the gallery and with director Sir Nicholas Serota in particular. Export licences are not required for works under 50 years old, so the sculpture is free to travel abroad.
Last year Mr Saatchi sold 12 early works by Hirst back to the artist for a reported £7.8m - including a dissected pig in formaldehyde, This Little Piggy Went to Market. He is also thought to have sold another of his favourite works by the enfant terrible, a sheep in formaldehyde titled Away From the Flock, for £2.1m. However, the magnitude of this recent private sale places Hirst among the very biggest names of the international Contemporary art scene.
