A 10-year-old boy painted a picture live alongside well-known Caribbean artist Bradley Theodore.
The child prodigy of painting Andrés Valencia, only 10 years old, painted a live painting this Saturday with the well-known Caribbean artist Bradley Theodore at the Art Miami fair and surrounded by people eager to meet him and capture him on video.
With his childlike innocence intact, Andrés did not hesitate to answer “yes” when Efe he asked if he had just painted it better.
The boy of Mexican origin and resident of San Diego (California) was accompanied by his parents, Guadalupe, a lawyer, and Elsa, a jewelry designer, both Mexican, who did not hide their pride in their son’s talent in front of the visitors of Art Miami, one of the Art Basel Miami satellite fairs.
As he told Efe, does not make him nervous to paint in front of so many people.
The agglomeration of journalists and the public around the Chase Contemporary gallery space, where the event took place and where Andrés Valencia has exhibited his works, all of them sold before the closing of Art Miami, made it necessary to put up a security cordon.
The boy, who, according to his mother told EfeHe is a very good student but “he likes art too much” and does not perform as well as he could, he traced one of his characteristic cubist faces with charcoal and then blurred the lines with a gloved finger.
In a minute, the canvas placed at Andrés’ height was no longer blank.
Then Bradley Theodore, a native of Turks and Caicos, filled in with brightly colored acrylic paint the different fragments that made up the face that Andres drew.
He had to do it sitting down, as he is a tall man and the painting was at the height of the 10-year-old boy, who speaks perfect Spanish.
The sensation of 2021
Both artists greeted each other at the end of the work surrounded by video cameras and telephones.
Andrés Valencia has become the sensation of Art Miami and in general of Miami Art Week.
Famous people such as the Colombian actress Sofía Vergara, who bought one of Andrés’s paintings, whose prices ranged between $ 5,000 and $ 25,000, and the actor Channing Tatum, in addition to visual artists, have paraded through the Chase Contemporary space.
Nick Korniloff, CEO of Art Miami, told Efe that when he was organizing this year’s fair, the first since the stoppage forced by the pandemic, and the Chase Contemporary gallery proposed Andrés Valencia, he did not hesitate to accept him as an artist.
“When I saw the photographs and videos I was totally shocked, it couldn’t be real that those pictures were of a child of such a young age,” he said.
The executive director of Art Miami recalled that his obligation is to ensure that “the quality of the works exhibited is high and the artists respected” to underline afterwards that Andrés Valencia’s production perfectly meets those requirements.
Korniloff used words such as “extraordinary”, “prodigy” and “unique” to refer to the art of this children’s painter from San Diego (California) and when asked what Andrés is like, he replied: “He is a normal child, a beautiful child, with great personality and creativity. “
Although the Chase Contemporary gallery organized a major exhibition of Valencia art two weeks ago in New York, “these days are the most important” for him as an artist, he added.
A portion of the profits accruing to Art Miami from the sales of Andrés’s works will go to a foundation created in the name of a Korniloff stepson who disappeared at sea when he was 15 years old, according to the executive director told Efe.
Pamela Cohen, Korniloff’s wife and mother of the late Perry J. Cohen, explained to Efe that when he met Valencia he realized that there were similarities with his son.
“They both have old souls,” he stressed.
The Chase Contemporary website includes a biography of the boy in which it is mentioned that he was born in 2011 and his art is influenced by George Condo, his favorite painter, Picasso and cubism, among others.
According to this text, the child uses a ladder and a mixture of oil and acrylic to create large works, vivid colors and human figures with fragmented faces.
His teachers in the Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) program at the public school he attends in San Diego noticed Andres’s talent right away.
At home, the boy began to copy some of the works of art that his father collects and now works daily in a home studio, but he also frequently watches videos about art and artists to complete his training. (AND)
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