An oil painting by Adolf Hitler has been attacked in a museum by a man wielding a screwdriver.
The untitled artwork was hanging in the Museo di Salo, in Lake Garda resort of Salo, in Italy, as part of a travelling exhibition called ‘Museum of Madness’.
According to a museum spokesman, the perpetrator, who looked about 40 years old, shouted ‘b*****d’ as he slashed the painting.
The oil painting by Adolf Hitler that has been attacked in a museum by a man wielding a screwdriver
Security guards stepped in in time to prevent the man from destroying the painting before he fled the scene.
The picture suffered only small bits of chipping of the colours. The owner, a private collector in Germany, decided after examining the damage not to file criminal charges.
The painting, measuring 12 by 16 inches in size, features a seemingly endless dark space with gloomy colours. In the foreground, a man sits behind a table next to a standing figure.
The painting is signed ‘Adolf Hitler’ in the bottom-right corner.
Hitler tried unsuccessfully to become a painter at the Vienna Art academy
Hitler tried unsuccessfully to become a painter at the Vienna Art academy before rising to the heights of Fuhrer of Nazi Germany
It is the first time that his work has been publicly shown in an exhibition.
According to a museum spokesman, the reason why the painting was not better protected is because of its ‘poor artistic value’ compared to works by Francisco de Goya and Francis Bacon, which are also part of the exhibition.
The curator Vittorio Sgarbi denounced the attack.
He said that works like the painting of Hitler should be seen with ‘contempt and distance… without reproducing the censorship and hatred expressed by the dictatorships’.
Sgarbi called Hitler’s work ‘the image of despair’ and said it reminded him of Franz Kafka.
He said that nothing can be seen in it but ‘misery’.