🕯️ LEGENDS GARDEN
🐷 Pigcasso
Domestic pig (Sus domesticus) · Farm Sanctuary SA, Franschhoek, Western Cape, South Africa
Lives in Legends Garden
Joanne Lefson pulled Pigcasso out of a South African intensive pig farm as a piglet in 2016 and took her to Farm Sanctuary SA in Franschhoek. Lefson noticed the pig ate everything in her stall except the paintbrushes, and trained her with a clicker to hold a brush and drag it across a canvas. In December 2021 a German collector paid £20,000 for her painting 'Wild and Free', a record price for an artwork made by an animal, and her work eventually raised over a million dollars for the sanctuary. She died in March 2024, aged eight, one day before Jane Goodall was due to visit her.
What they do
Takes a fat paintbrush crosswise in her mouth and swings her whole head left, then right, dragging a wet stripe of colour across the canvas — then leans in and presses her snout onto the corner to sign it..
Would rather be painting than eating, which for a 700 kg pig is saying something.
Lore
- ★She signed every finished canvas by dipping the tip of her snout in beetroot ink and stamping it on the corner.
- ★Her painting 'Wild and Free' sold in December 2021 for £20,000 (about $26,900), a record for an artwork by an animal.
- ★Her exhibitions travelled to the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and China, and her sales passed $1 million for the sanctuary.
- ★She was the first non-human artist given her own solo exhibition.
Helping the real one
Follow Pigcasso official shop (Farm Sanctuary SA) →This is a creator channel, not a donation page. This is a shop, not a donation page. It sells her original paintings and prints and states on the page that proceeds benefit Farm Sanctuary SA, the registered non-profit where she lived. Farm Sanctuary SA's own site says donations are welcome but publishes no donate URL that would load, and farmsanctuarysa.org/donate returns 404.
Where this comes from
Every link here was checked twice before it was published. If one is dead or wrong, tell us.