The artwork by Italian artist and provocateur Maurizio Cattelan, made of 18-karat gold, went under the hammer in New York on Wednesday night.
The starting price of just under $10 million was set to correspond to the weight of the fully functioning toilet in gold. The bidding stopped at $12.1 million, equivalent to just under 115 million kronor, including fees.
“America” was created in two copies. The second was stolen under high-profile circumstances from the British castle Blenheim Palace in 2019 and has never been recovered.
