Konrad Kujau (1938 - 2000) was a German illustrator and forger. His parents were members of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) in the 1930s, teaching their children Nazi ideology. Kujau remained devout to these principles and idealised Adolf Hitler.
Kujau became famous in the 1980s after forging a series of sixty diaries allegedly written by Adolf Hitler. Kujau forged the diaries from 1981 to 1983 before they sold for 9.3 million Deutsche Marks. After analysis by experts, the diaries were revealed to be fakes and Kujau was imprisoned.
Konrad Kujau was incredibly talented as an artist and was able to use these skills for forgeries. During his sentence in prison, Kujau painted leda atomica copy, which is a ‘genuine Kajau fake’ of Salvador Dalí’s 1947 masterpiece leda atomica.
The painting depicts a full-frontal image of Dalí’s wife Gala as Leda, the mythological queen of Sparta.