MThe South African pig “Pigcasso” became world famous thanks to her talent for painting, which she discovered by chance. Her paintings have been sold around the globe. She is considered the most successful non-human artist in the world and has made it into the Guinness Book of Records for the most expensive painting ever painted of an animal. The record work is called “Wild and Free” and was bought by a German a little over two years ago for the equivalent of just under 24,000 euros.
Now Pigcasso died of chronic rheumatoid arthritis on her farm in Franschhoek shortly before her eighth birthday. “It became apparent and was a matter of time,” Joanne Lefson, the owner of the farm, told the FAZ. Her health deteriorated rapidly last September and she has not painted since then.
Lefson runs a sanctuary in Franschhoek, a town famous for its wineries just over an hour's drive from Cape Town. Pigcasso became one of the first residents of this “Farm Sanctuary”. In 2016, Lefson and a friend brought her from a large industrial pig farm, where she would otherwise have been slaughtered a few months later.
Lefson says he came up with the idea of encouraging the pig to paint because it showed great interest in paint brushes that were still lying around in the stable from construction work. She got paint and canvases and tried to encourage the pig to paint with the help of food. Guests staying at her farm expressed interest in purchasing one of the abstract-looking paintings, which encouraged Lefson to market the paintings.
Pigcasso's works for animal lovers, art lovers and investors
At the beginning of 2018, Pigcasso had its first exhibition in Cape Town, followed by further exhibitions around the world, including in Amsterdam, London and Beijing. In Germany there was an exhibition in Hann in 2022. Münden. The car company Nissan used Pigcasso in an advertising campaign, and the watch manufacturer Swatch had her paint the design for a “limited edition”.
There are some prominent Pigcasso collectors, including tennis player Rafael Nadal. Lefson told the FAZ about a year ago that Pigcasso's works had brought her the equivalent of more than 370,000 euros. The money goes towards expanding and maintaining the sanctuary, where various animals live, including pigs, cows, chickens, sheep and peacocks. She roughly divided the buyers of Pigcasso's works into three categories: animal lovers, art lovers and investors who speculate that the pictures will increase in value.
Lefson said back then that Pigcasso was not in the best of health and was suffering from the long-term effects of having been destined for an early death and pumped full of growth hormones. She would consider herself lucky if the pig lived to see his tenth birthday. In a statement, she wrote that Pigcasso's illness was “directly related to the manipulation and modifications to which animals are subjected in today's industrialized factory farms.”
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