Originals of the famous Danish Mohammed caricatures, whose publication in 2005 sparked protests in numerous Muslim countries, will be auctioned off in an online auction on Friday afternoon.
The iconic original drawings would be brought onto the market for the first time, said the auction house Kurt Westergaard Icons.
The auction opened at the beginning of the week on the kwicons.com website.
The drawings were penned by the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and show the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.
It was published on September 30, 2005, along with eleven other cartoons, by the conservative Danish daily newspaper "Jyllands-Posten" under the title "The Face of Mohammed."
As a result, there were protests and violence in several Muslim-majority countries.
In 2012, the French satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" printed the cartoon - three years later, two Islamists killed twelve people in an attack on the editorial office in Paris.
Also in France in 2020, teacher Samuel Paty was murdered after showing the Mohammed cartoons to his students during a class on freedom of expression.
Highest bid: 445,000 euros
The illustrator Westergaard had been working for “Jyllands-Posten” since the mid-1980s.
He died in 2021 at the age of 86 after living under police protection and in a secret residence for more than 15 years.
On the auction website, Westergaard's long-time gallerist Erik Guldager explains that the cartoonist created the famous drawing based on an image he created for the Frederikshavn Art Museum in 1994.
This is therefore called “Original Drawing 1/1” and is also part of the auction.
Westergaard copied the commissioned cartoon for “Jyllands-Posten” so that several copies are now up for auction.
The highest bid for one of the cartoons on Friday was 445,000 euros.
Feb/AFP