5-year-old Australian painting prodigy Aelita Andre will once again have a solo show at Chelsea's Agora Gallery.
The "youngest professional painter in the world," according to Agora, "works in acrylic, with occasional added objects such as toys like plastic dinosaurs, butterflies and penguins, and various other items, including even a microscope." Also, glitter.
"They're not real. And they're not realistic," Aelita says of her own work. "They're like space. And they don't look really, really much like space, they look abstract."
She had her first New York solo show last summer, before which she'd already sold at least one painting for $30,000. At that show, Agora gallery director Anglea Di Bello called Aelita's work "abstract expressionism" and also "surrealist".
Aelita started painting before she was two years old. Michael Andre, the girl's father, said that at as early as nine-months, Aelita would crawl onto her parents' canvasses (both are artists) and begin to paint.
The precocious painter seems to relish the spotlight and on a trip last summer to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with her family, amid works by Picasso and Monet, asked her parents "Where are my paintings?'
Agora put together the mesmerizing video above showing Aelita at work. At one point, she calmly states, "I love painting. I'm going to paint for 24 hours."
The show opened on June 12 and runs through July 3rd at Agora Gallery at 530 West 25th Street. An opening reception will be held Saturday the 16th, from 6-8PM.