The artist Andres Valencia with his painting “Lourdes” in his home studio in San Diego. Photograph by Elsa Valencia. In 1889, Pablo Picasso painted “Le petit picador jaune”, a small work in oil inspired by visits he made with his father to the bullfights in Spain. In the centre of the painting is a bullfighter on horseback, his pants and jacket, or “chaquetilla”, a blazing yellow. It is an extraordinary effort for an artist who was only eight years old at the time — a sign of budding genius.
Earlier this year, Andres Valencia painted “Romero”, a medium-sized work inspired by nothing but his own imagination and perhaps a picture he saw somewhere. It shows a bullfighter surrounded by blazing yellow, his chaquetilla embroidered with flowers and jewels, his face a swirl of Cubist abstraction. It is a dazzling effort for an artist who is only 12 years old — a reincarnation, one can’t help but wonder, of Picasso in modern-day San Diego?
Over Zoom, Valencia seems a typical American boy. He squirms and yawns and sighs, shy and maybe a little bored by the adult conversation going on around him (and who could blame him?). He plays with his dog, Nieva, a rescue, who pops in and out of frame on his lap. What inspired him to start painting at age five? “Painting was always something that made me calm, something that was always fun for me,” he says in a way that suggests it was no big deal, just his life, whatever. “So I would do it, like, a lot.”
The fact that Valencia’s paintings sell for up to $US230,000 ($AU350,000) doesn’t seem to faze him very much. His debut show in New York sold out on the opening day. Collectors including Sofía Vergara, Tommy Mottola and Jessica Goldman Srebnick have acquired his work. In 2022, when he was 11, he became a media sensation at Art Miami in Florida, where Forbes suggests he made $US1.3 million ($AU1.96 million) in a matter of days. He has also raised more than a million dollars for charities including amfAR and UNICEF. The artist has some 261,000 fans on Instagram, where he can be seen serenely painting canvas in real-time videos filmed in his art studio (i.e. his parents’ basement). His career would be considered accomplished for any artist, let alone one still years away from qualifying for a driver’s licence.
His classmates were the first to notice there was a prodigy in their ranks. They were drawing “smiley faces and stuff”, Valencia says, while he was doing “an eye here, an eye here, a mouth there”, surrealist elements that are, again, very Picasso-like in character. When Valencia was in first year at school, his mother, Elsa Valencia, stopped by to take photographs (“I was the mum who always went in and took pictures during Halloween, Valentine’s and so forth”), and was shocked to see her son’s classmates all rushing over to see what he had drawn. Then the other mothers started telling her that they couldn’t believe his talent. “And so that was the beginning of me thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ ” she says.
Elsa and her husband, Lupe, encouraged their son by supplying him with paints and canvases. One day, towards the end of the pandemic, a family friend noticed a particularly impressive canvas and announced his intention to buy it. Elsa resisted initially, but the friend was Bernie Chase, a New York art dealer with a gallery in SoHo named Chase Contemporary. “Bernie convinced us to allow him to take 10 canvases to New York,” Lupe says. “Bernie said, ‘Look, this is real serious art. This is not just kids’ art.’ ” Chase’s clients seemed to agree. The paintings got so much attention in New York that Chase decided to take Valencia to the Art Miami fair. “What are you talking about?” his parents recall asking. The idea was absurd. “His line to us was, ‘This is beautiful art and the world has to see it.’ ”
Valencia had just turned 10 when he found himself with his own booth at one of the biggest art fairs in the world. By day two, every painting had sold. The director of Art Miami, Nick Korniloff, invited Valencia to do a demonstration. Crowds crushed in to watch the curious spectacle of a 10-year-old making art in a hall filled with artists who had spent decades honing their craft. “I don’t really get stage fright,” Valencia says. “It was really fun knowing all those people were there just to see me paint.”
In production is a coffee table art book to be published by DK Penguin Random House in early 2025. Valencia’s work will also be auctioned by the international auction house Phillips on May 14 (in New York) and June 1 (in Hong Kong), following Phillips’ earlier sales of four of his paintings, one of which went for $US160,000 ($AU245,000). And Valencia will be at Frieze Seoul in South Korea in September. But Elsa is a tough manager, careful not to let her son get pulled in too many directions. Even interviews like this one are carefully negotiated so he is never overwhelmed by the spotlight. “I control the whole situation,” Elsa says. “I always tell people he has to be a little boy first. He goes to public school. He has friends who go on bike rides, play outside. That is our priority before anything else.”
What does Valencia himself think about being a global art sensation? How does he balance fame with life as a boy in Southern California? The other kids at school saw him on TV, which was “really cool”, he says proudly, but the idea of having to balance anything seems never to have crossed his mind until now. “Some days I paint, other days I don’t,” he says. “It just depends on how much homework I get.”
