Andrés Valencia, the 11-year-old “little Picasso” who sells paintings for thousands of dollars

— Of the paintings you have painted, which is your favorite?

I must say two: The Outsiderswhich are basically just some guys hanging out, and Venucubeinspired by Pokemon.

SIGHT: The super-rich young heirs who want to pay more taxes

The speaker is Andrés Valencia, the latest sensation in the art world: an 11-year-old boy.

He talks to BBC Mundo as soon as he leaves school, accompanied by his mother, Elsa Valencia.

He tries to recover normality in his native San Diego after having been during the first weekend of December the Spotlight at Art Miamione of the most important contemporary art fairs in the United States.

There, while the night of the inauguration Andrés posed for the media and the curious and greeted collectors and celebrities, Chase Contemporarythe New York gallery that represents him, sold almost all of his work.

While Andrés Valencia signed autographs and posed for photos, Chase Contemporary sold almost all of his works during the last edition of Art Miami. (GETTY IMAGES).

Yes, also the painting of the idle guys who drink and smoke and the cubist version of Venusaur, his favorite dinosaur from the Nintendo video game. Both, like many of his other colorful canvases, are inevitably reminiscent of the author of the guernica.

That is why he earned the nickname “little Picasso”.

six figures

“The average price of his paintings is around $150,000“Bernie Chase, the owner of the gallery, tells BBC Mundo, as if inviting them to do calculations.

But having to practically hang the sign from sold out at Art Miami it was actually no surprise.

He had already done so in June during his first solo exhibition at the gallery’s headquarters in SoHo. Those who took home the 35 exhibited works paid for them between US$50,000 and US$125,000.

Andrés Valencia in his studio, surrounded by his paintings. (ELSA VALENCIA).

Six figures reached that month Ms Cubeanother cubist-style portrait that he painted at the age of 9, at an auction at the Phillips de Pury house in Hong Kong, and also the work Mayanamed after Picasso’s daughter, during a charity gala held in Capri, Italy, in July.

His forceful strokes and multiple perspective paintings swell the collections of the Colombian Sofia Vergaraone of the highest paid TV actresses in the US, of the powerful music businessman Tommy Mottola or the Hollywood star channing tatum.

And in November, the BTS singer known as V shared another of Andrés’ works with his 50 million followers on Instagram.

“Thank you @andresvalenciaart for this beautiful work of art! Since I first saw your work, I’ve been a fan,” he wrote next to the portrait of a tearful man in shades of blue. The post It has already garnered more than 9 million likes.

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All this has the young Californian grabbing the headlines one day and another too.

“They ask you interviews almost daily. They have called us from talk shows main, but we have told them all that no”, says his mother emphatically.

“My son is an artist, but is not a celebrities. He is first and foremost a child“, continues this 48-year-old clinical psychologist.

“We want him to go to school, to study music, to play the piano, to learn to read and write in Spanish, to go out with his friends to the park.”

charitable work

Both she and her husband, Guadalupe Valencia, Californians of Mexican descent and also parents of Atiana, insist that they are trying to lead the life of a normal family.

And they stress that their son’s big wins are one more opportunity to remind him of what they believe in.

Elsa and Guadalupe Valencia say they try to give their children Andrés and Atiana as normal a life as possible. (GETTY IMAGES).

“We were not born into abundance. And before I became a clinical therapist, I was a social worker for many years, working in foster homes and in prison settings, and I have seen up close what it is to be underprivileged. We are very, very lucky.”

For this reason, they emphasize to their offspring the importance of contributing to society. Something that, they say, Andrés already has incorporated.

Much of the proceeds from his art have been donated to organizations such as amfAR and Unicef. And most recently he donated 100% of the proceeds from the sale of a print of his original work. Invasion of Ukraineto support children in that country plunged into war, through the Klitschko Foundation.

100% of the profits from the sale of a print of "Invasion of Ukraine" (in the image, the original canvas by Andrés Valencia) has been allocated to help Ukrainian children. (GETTY IMAGES).

This is something that his legion of fans applauds, the same ones who call him a “wunderkind.”

A “different” child

Meanwhile, and although they shy away from such labels, his parents acknowledge that Andrés was already “different” from a very young age.

“When he was about four years old and he drew, I used to correct him,” Elsa recalls. “‘Andrés, we have two eyes, not three. And why are you making the nose where the ear goes? Don’t make the face like that,’ she told him.”

He says that he stopped doing it after seeing his first grade classmates enthralled with the drawings he had just made during the class Halloween celebration.

“From that day, I stepped back and did not interfere again. I just let him be and create“.

Letting him be meant she spent hours sketching in her mother’s studio—she also designs and makes jewelry by hand—or trying to copy the paintings that adorned the living room and drawing inspiration from her favorite artists.

“I like Picasso,” says Andrés, pointing out the obvious. “But also (Amedeo) Modigliani and George Condo“. The influence of the elongated figures of the Italian of the beginning of the last century and the geometry of the contemporary American is also perceived in his acrylics.

Until now, Andrés has not received painting classes, he is self-taught.

“I’ve been in the art business for 20 years and this is very unusual,” Chase says proudly. “I’ve worked with guys like Peter Beard and Kenny Scharf. Andres has the potential to be that big or bigger.”

“Show your talent to the world”

Chase began acquiring her watercolors when she was six years old, like other family members and friends.

“I used to go to his house on weekends and buy him drawings, paintings,” he recalls.

— Is it true that one of those days he asked you for US$5,000 for a painting?

– That’s how it went. And today it is clear that I came out winning: it is worth 30 times more.

“Already in those years I saw that It evolved very quickly and very organically. He did not start from sketches, but started directly on the canvasit flowed,” Chase continues.

At the time he convinced Andrés’s parents that the time had come for the world to know his artistic abilities.

and last year contacted Nick Korniloff, the director of Art Miamito make his debut there.

In various interviews with the media, Korniloff recalled that he was skeptical at first and that, fearful of risking his reputation, he even ignored the artist’s age in the fair’s promotional materials.

Although that information did not take long to come to light, nor did collectors and celebrities arrive.

Andrés Valencia has become quite a sensation. (GETTY IMAGES).

and andres now also has a publicist, Sam Morrisa veteran of the New York art and theater scene.

Skepticism

However, there are also those who —in the art sector and beyond— regard the phenomenon of the “little Picasso” with doubts, even with suspicion.

Some stress that it is still a beautiful and inspiring story that easily falls into a post-pandemic audience.

Bernie Chase (center) is the owner of the Chase Contemporary gallery and represents Andrés Valencia. (GETTY IMAGES).

Others doubt the value of his works as an investment.

“There are too many people who believe in new artists as a type of asset protected from inflation,” he told in that line to The New York Times Alexandre Shulan, owner of Lomex, a New York gallery specializing in emerging artists.

“But the life of any young artist is going to change dramatically over time, so assuming that the investment in a 24-year-old artist is going to be long-lived is ridiculous enough, let alone when the artist is younger; a child, as in this case”.

Others stress that children tend to imitate and see in Andrés echoes of artists who became famous as minors old and generated million-dollar sales, stories that did not take long to deflate.

This is the case of Aelita Andre, an Australian who at the age of four had her first individual exhibition in New York. EITHER Alexandra Nechitawho was similarly called “a Mozart with a brush”, was lavished on television shows and made millions from the sale of her works.

More recent was the phenomenon of Lola June, a girl barely two years old for whose expressionist doodles some collectors paid US$1,500.

Darker is the example of Marla Olmstead, who sold his paintings for thousands of dollars and his story captured international attention in 2005, when he was just four years old. But two documentaries, one with hidden camera footage in her studio, later called into question whether her paintings were her own work or created in collaboration with her father.

It is not the case of Andrés. The Californian has been seen creating his works from scratch with a confident stroke on numerous occasions. His Instagram account, managed by the gallery, bears witness to this.

“To us, like everyone else, it never ceases to amaze us how that little mind can create what it creates,” says her father, Guadalupe Valencia.

And he defends himself: “But for me the important thing is that people value his paintings before knowing that they are made by someone who is 11 years old.”

Chase the gallerist is more forceful.

“Let’s not call him a prodigy, but he is a very, very good painter. He has advanced in one year what many artists cannot achieve in 10, and I’m talking about people like Condo.”

He says that he gave him 45 books by as many artists, from the 16th to the 19th century, which the boy has already studied in depth. “He is now mixing what he has done so far and defining his own style.”

Andrés corroborates it. He tells that he is now working on a painting with the theme of pinocchio. “This time is different.”

Source: Elcomercio