The highly anticipated art auction season arrived on Sunday with a specially curated sale that included a sculpture of a kneeling Hitler by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, which fetched a record price for the artist, and a ball suspended in a water tank by Jeff Koons.

Christie's "Bound to Fail" themed sale kicked off the week-long New York auctions of modern, post-war and contemporary art at Christie's and Sotheby's.

Him, Cattelan's controversial sculpture of Hitler, appears as a small child kneeling in prayer when approached from the rear. But from the front, the viewer comes face-to-face with the unmistakable likeness of Hitler. It sold for a record $17.2 million(£12 million). The previous auction record for a work by Cattelan was $7.9 million.

The 2001 work, made with human hair, wax and polyester resin, is the artist's proof from an edition of three. It was included in the artist's retrospective at the Guggenheim in 2011.