Gallery sells work by Shoah hate artist

The Los Angeles-based Saatchi Art online gallery is refusing to stop selling paintings by French artist Thomas Losfeld, who participated in the Iran Holocaust Cartoon Contest in 2015.

Jewish News readers expressed concern this week that the site, which is not affiliated to the Saatchi Gallery in London, was stocking the artist’s drawings despite serious concerns about his past activities.

One of Losfeld’s previous pieces shows the guard tower at Auschwitz-Birkenau set within a snow globe, with dollar bills falling instead of snow. Another depicts Robert Faurisson, a Franco-British Holocaust denier, wearing blue and white striped clothing and a yellow star.

Losfeld’s art was displayed in Tehran alongside other controversial pieces by artists from around the world, in what has become an annual expression of Holocaust denial and revisionism, sponsored by the Iranian leadership.

British art lover David Fitoussi expressed concern that his work was for sale, saying: “Losfeld also designed the cover of the latest LP for French hip-hop ‘artist’ Amalek, one of whose songs is called ‘Pute a Juif,’ so there are some serious questions to be answered by the gallery”.

In a statement, the gallery said: “Saatchi Art is a democratic platform with a mission of creating opportunity for all artists, and therefore any artist can create a profile on the site. Saatchi Art does not believe in censorship unless a specific artwork is pornographic or incites racial hatred.”