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Officials at the Louvre have been accused of censorship after withdrawing a work from its Tuileries Gardens in Paris for being sexually explicit. The work by the Dutch art and design collective Atelier Van Lieshout, entitled the Domestikator, was due to go on show later this month as part of the Hors les Murs public art programme organised by representatives of the Fiac contemporary art fair (19-22 October).

But the erotic nature of the large-scale architectural structure, the outline of which depicts a couple having sex, prompted the Louvre’s decision to bar the work from the gardens which are overseen by the museum. According to the French newspaper Le Monde, Jean-Luc Martinez, the director of the Louvre, has sent a letter to Fiac organisers raising concerns about the piece.

“Online commentaries point out this work has a brutal aspect; it risks being misunderstood by visitors to the gardens,” Martinez writes. The museum also raised fears that the sculpture would have been sited near a children’s playground. Representatives at the museum were not immediately available for comment.

Joep Van Lieshout, who founded the eponymous collective, was due to move into the Domestikator for a month in Paris, and produce a series of objects in collaboration with invited artists. The controversial piece is, meanwhile, already on public display at Bochum in Germany as part of the Ruhrtriennale (until 3 October).