Michael Schultz, the Berlin art gallery owner who promotes Bisky’s works, said: “They polarise They are either loved or hated. Nobody who looks at them walks away feeling indifferent.”The artist, who was brought up behind the Berlin Wall in Communist East Germany, has a different explanation for flirting so ostentatiously with totalitarian themes “Good painting is always autobiographical,” he said. “As a child in East Germany I was preoccupied with official imagery and the fact that these images were incredibly similar to those used by other horror regimes.”For Bisky, painting is an attempt to come to terms with Germany’s totalitarian past. “My work is about ideology, indoctrination of youth, clich?about beauty and the image the Germans at present abroad,” he said.He said that he had no plans to drop these themes, although he admitted that he was once asked to consider painting brunettes rather than Aryan blondes.

He refused.”I knew that I was absolutely right not to do this,” he said.. After the largest corruption trial in French history, three former senior officials of the Elf-Aquitaine oil company were jailed yesterday for embezzling tens of millions of pounds from Elf in the early 1990s. The one-time head of the company’s Africa section, Andr?arallo, 76, was jailed for four.Thirty-four other former Elf officials and associates were given lesser sentences in a judgment delayed for four months The trial ended in July. The prosecution had said up to €300m (£208m) had been diverted from the company to secret accounts and to bribe foreign officials and leaders.Investigators failed to substantiate claims that Elf had been a clandestine agency of the French state, funnelling cash to African leaders, and, once, the German Christian Democratic Party.

In an earlier trial, the former foreign minister, Roland Dumas, was convicted of sharing in the Elf largesse but was acquitted on appeal.The French state used its law on “defence secrecy” to prevent magistrates investigating more deeply the wider allegations. The prosecution was unable to present evidence on accusations, including charges from M. Dumas, that money from Elf was used illegally to fund mainstream French political parties.M. Le Floch-Prigent admitted he had “left the rails” and taken advantage of Elf funds.