"The grace of a dancer": When a Swedish chimpanzee took the art world by storm

It is February 1964 in Gothenburg, in southwestern Sweden. Journalist Åke “Dacke” Axelsson and gallery owner Yngve Funkegård manage to fool the art world by exhibiting five paintings by the “French painter” Pierre Brassau.

In reality, however, all the works on display were created by Peter, a chimpanzee from the local zoo. The goal? “To criticize modern art and, above all, to fool Gothenburg’s leading newspaper, the Göteborgs-Posten (GP),” explains freelance journalist Peter Gröpman.

A hoax that worked perfectly. In the Göteborgs-Posten, art critic Rolf Anderberg praised an artist who paints “with the delicacy of a ballet dancer.” For its part, the daily Göteborgs Handels och Sjöfartstidning lauded his “intertwining of powerful brushstrokes.”

Sensational stunt and outraged public

Despite the revelation of the hoax, Mr. Anderberg stands by his opinion: in his view, it is indeed the “best painting in the exhibition.” The ruse was so well-crafted that a private collector, after Pierre Brassau was unmasked, purchased one of the paintings for 450 Swedish kronor (equivalent to nearly 40 euros at the current exchange rate).

While journalist Åke “Dacke” Axelsson was acquitted following a complaint from the Swedish National Artists’ Organization ( KRO), the gallery owner was forced to close his business. The reason? A public boycott, as Peter Gröpman noted in a podcast for Sveriges Radio.

Another notable development: in an interview with 20 Minutes, the Borås Zoo explained that it had been duped in 2009 by investing 2,200 kronor (about 200 euros) in a work that turned out to be a fake imitation of their own monkey. “When we compared the purchased painting with photographs from the exhibition, we realized it wasn’t the original painting.”