Andy Warhol called him a modern Tarzan. “He jumps in and out of the snake pit he keeps at his home. He cuts himself and paints with the blood. He wears sandals and no socks in the middle of Winter. He lived in a parked car on 13th Street for six months. He moved when he woke up and found a transvestite sleeping on the roof.”
After reading Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa, at the age seventeen, the handsome teenage son of a wealthy industrialist travelled to Zululand in the 1950s, accompanying Charles Darwin’s grandson. The romance of Africa inspired the young artist in Peter who was heading for a career in medicine. He became infatuated with Africa and vowed to make a life for himself there that was as far as he could possibly get from American Ivy League universities.
