ART watchers who scoff that a chimpanzee could do better than some contemporary artists were proved right yesterday when three paintings by an ape sold for more than £14,000.

Congo, the world’s only chimpanzee to have his paintings sold at auction, was more successful than Jake and Dinos Chapman, Andy Warhol and other renowned artists of the 20th century.

Three abstract paintings created by Congo in 1957 were estimated to fetch up to £800, but spiralled to more than 20 times their estimate after a prolonged bidding contest at Bonhams in London. They outsold the Chapman brothers’ Tinkerbellend, which fetched £1,900, and even put Andy Warhol to shame. One of the New York artist’s paintings, estimated to fetch up to £500,000, failed to reach its reserve price.

The buyer of Congo’s work, a Californian telecommunications consultant, said that he had been prepared to pay double. Howard Hong said that he was so worried about being outbid that he contacted friends to raise more than $50,000 (£27,434). He said: “Many people have said to me, ‘There is a cheaper solution — buy a chimpanzee and put it in a room with some paper and paint’. But on a purely artistic level when I saw the paintings they struck me. (The style) looks like an early Kandinsky. My only upset is that Congo never titled his paintings.” Mr Hong is in good company. Other owners of Congo’s work have been Picasso, Miró and, reportedly, the Duke of Edinburgh.

Mr Hong said that he was compelled to buy the paintings because Congo was “the ultimate chimp of the art world”. “It is said that what makes us human is our ability to conceive of abstract concepts. This totally contradicts that theory.”

Congo created some 400 drawings and paintings in the 1950s after being encouraged by Desmond Morris, the animal behavourist who wrote The Naked Ape. The chimp was a regular guest on Dr Morris’s Zoo Time television programme after the scientist became convinced that apes could understand the basic elements that drove human beings to create art.

Howard Rutkowski, Bonhams’s director of impressionist and modern art, said that Congo was renowned as the most celebrated animal artist. “It is not just any chimp — it is Congo,” he said. “If you own a Congo you are in the company of Picasso and Miró. Desmond Morris traded Congo’s paintings with those artists. Perhaps Miró’s Congo is worth more than Morris’s Miró.”

The price is almost certainly a world record because there are no recorded public auctions of a chimpanzee’s work.

Dr Morris said that Congo was unusual because he was the only non-human painter who took care over his art. He said: “With other animals there was an element of accident in their work. Congo was desperately trying to avoid accident. If you tried to interrupt him he would have a temper tantrum. If you tried to get him to continue after he had finished he wouldn’t do it. I would offer him a brush and he would just look at me.

“In the end he got too strong. He had a very powerful bite. Although he got a lot of criticism, serious artists such as Dali did understand him. Dali said, ‘The hand of the chimp is crazy human; the hand of Jackson Pollock is totally animal’.”

THE APE AND THE MEN

Congo

Mid-1960s: Died from tuberculosis

Jake and Dinos Chapman

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