A Polish museum has purchased a controversial replica of a concentration camp – made of Lego.
Zbigniew Libera enraged the toy company in 1996 when he built a miniature version of a Nazi death camp using Lego’s signature colourful bricks. The set featured Lego crematoria and barracks, barbed-wire fences and miniature guards and skeletons, all marked with the company’s name.
The Polish artist was heavily criticised at the time for making light of the Holocaust, but his work has since been shown in galleries around the world, including at New York's Jewish Museum ten years ago.
The Lego collection has now been bought from a Norwegian collector for £45,000 by Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art. The artwork, described by the museum as "one of the most important works of contemporary Polish art,” will go on display later this year.
