Pierre Brassau

Peter, better known by his alias Pierre Brassau, was a chimpanzee and artist who was the subject of a 1964 hoax perpetrated by Åke "Dacke" Axelsson, a journalist at the Swedish tabloid Göteborgs-Tidningen.

Axelsson came up with the idea of exhibiting a series of paintings made by a non-human primate, under the pretense that they were the work of a previously unknown French artist named "Pierre Brassau", in order to test whether critics could tell the difference between true avant-garde modern art and the work of a chimpanzee.

[2] Axelsson had persuaded Peter's 17-year-old keeper to give the chimpanzee a brush and paint.

After Peter had created several paintings, Axelsson chose the best four and arranged to have them exhibited at the Gallerie Christinae in Göteborg, Sweden.

[1] Rolf Anderberg of the Göteborgs-Posten wrote, "Brassau paints with powerful strokes, but also with clear determination.