Four-year-old Aelita Andre already has her own exhibit at a Manhattan gallery this month. Her parents are both artists, so it makes you wonder whether Aelita has inherited their gifts or is it merely wishful thinking on their part that their daughter should follow in their footsteps.
"I used to paint and I had prepared a canvas on the floor," her father, Michael Andre, told NBC. "She was nine months old and she crawled onto the canvas and she just took to it. Her hands moved around the canvas."
So, he and his wife, Nikka Kalashnikova, bought Aelita large canvases, acrylic paints and other materials.
"She works with the paints individually and layers the paint and creates texture. It's amazing that she has an innate ability to do it," the father proud told NBC.
But Angela Di Bello, director of the Agora Gallery in New York City where Aelita's exhibition, "The Prodigy of Color," is being shown, was flabbergasted by the prodigy's work.
"I saw great colors, great movement, great composition and very playful and I thought this is fantastic." Then she discovered the artist was just four years old.
Di Bello claimed to see elements of abstract expressionism and surrealism and a style and consistency that set Aelita's work apart.
If you think your child's refrigerator masterpieces show equal promise, then consider this: some of Aelita's paintings go for up to $9,000. She may only be four, but she's a veteran, having held her first exhibition in Melbourne when she was two years old.
During a family trip to New York to visit the Museum of Modern Art, Aelita was noticeably miffed not to find her work showcased along those of Chagall and Picasso.
"Where are my paintings?" she reportedly asked. The scary part is: they could well be there soon.
She isn't the only artist prodigy making the headlines. Seven-year-old Leilah Poulain has a painting of a penguin hanging in the exclusive Saatchi Gallery, and all because of a technical glitch. Her mother claimed to have 'accidentally' entered her daughter's penguin in a national art competition instead of downloading it to a private folder on her computer.
Two years later, Poulain won the competition. Now her penguin painting can be found hanging alongside works by Damien Hirst.
"Apparently there were 1,700 entries," Poulain's mother told the London Sun. "It seems it happened because I'm an idiot."
"Does this mean I'm famous?" she asked the Sun reporter. Like her American contemporary, the 7-year-old Brit would do well not to let all that talent go to her young head.
Image Credit: http://news.bbc.co.uk
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