History under hammer as piece of Berlin Wall, decorated by top artists, is auctioned

PARIS – Nearly 60 metres of the Iron Curtain’s most iconic symbol, the Berlin Wall, is being put up for auction in Paris after being decorated by some of the world’s top artists.

Slabs of the smooth concrete that divided East and West Berlin from 1961 until 1989 were cut from no man’s land and given to artists including France’s Daniel Buren and the late Eduardo Chillida of Spain in the 1990s to be used as canvases.

The result of their unique work is going under the hammer in central Paris on Thursday, under the title “Artists of Freedom.”

Chillida’s piece — a simple but menacing brown-painted silhouette— is expecting to fetch the most, with estimates of up to 300,000 euros (nearly $400,000).