In 1964, four paintings by unknown avant-garde French artist Pierre Brassau were exhibited in Sweden to rave reviews. Where is he now?

A painting by Pierre Brassau.












Whatever happened to this exceptional talent?


When his first four paintings were exhibited in Goteborg, Sweden, art critics acclaimed the works.

In one example, the influential Rolf Anderberg of the morning Posten wrote: "Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination. His brush strokes twist with furious fastidiousness. Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer."

Only one critic spoke out against the work, condemning Brassau's work with a scornful, "Only an ape could have done this."

GOOD EYE!

As it turned out, the latter critic was correct. Pierre Brassau was, in fact, an ape. More precisely, he was a four-year-old West African chimpanzee named Peter from Sweden's Boras zoo.

The Brassau name was the invention of Åke "Dacke" Axelsson, a journalist at the Göteborgs-Tidningen, one of Goteborg's daily papers. He came up with the idea of exhibiting the work of an ape as a way of putting pretentious critics to the test.

Axelsson persuaded Peter's seventeen-year-old keeper to give the chimpanzee a brush and oil paints. Initially, Peter preferred eating the paint to putting it on canvas, showing a special preference for the tart flavour of the cobalt blue. With a little encouragement, the chimp eventually started smearing paint on the canvases provided - although cobalt blue featured heavily in his work.

After Peter had created a number of paintings, Axelsson chose what he considered to be the four best and arranged to have them exhibited in an art show at the Christina Gallery.

"STILL THE BEST PAINTING IN THE EXHIBITION ..."

When the hoax was eventually revealed, Rolf Anderberg (the critic who had praised the work) insisted that Pierre's work was "still the best painting in the exhibition." This might tell you something about the man.

A private collector bought one of Brassau's works for $90 - which was a substantial sum for the time. As for Peter, in 1969 he was transferred to the Chester Zoo in England, where he lived out the remainder of his life, never resuming his art career.

Peter the Chimp, aka "Pierre Brassau," at work.














Pierre Brassau, as depicted on the cover of "The World's Greatest Hoaxes" by Richard Saunders.