Painting before she could walk, 10-year-old Australian abstract artist Aelita Andre has fans all over the world

Aelita Andre is no ordinary girl. The 10-year-old is an Australian abstract artist who started painting when she was just nine months old, even before she learnt how to walk. At the age of four, she opened her first solo exhibition in New York City, and she was also the youngest artist to stage a solo show in a museum: the famed Russian Academy of Fine Arts Museum. Her abstract expressionist work is critically acclaimed. Her first solo exhibition “The Prodigy of Colour” was sold out within merely seven days in 2011. Besides her artistic talent, the young artist is like any other girls her age: vibrant and imaginative, building forts with canvases and violins cases. During her recent visit to Hong Kong, Aelita worked with French furniture brand Roche Bobois to create a special art piece with its signature “Mah Jong” sofa for charity. She used the plain white couch as a canvas to create a wonderland of colours and textures. “For this painting, this part is a cliff and there’s a rainbow waterfall into a tropical rainforest,” she said. “Black is the colour of infinite, because space is black and the couch should be infinite.” The sofa was transformed into a world within a world in the cosmos, with a fluid flow of colours from one side to another. On the sofa, Aelita placed miniatures of trees and dinosaurs to form a bizarre landscape. The young girl mixes all the colours herself and creates all the different shapes and painting styles. Her mother Nikka Kalashnikova said her daughter was keen to retain complete control of her work. “She doesn’t let anybody touch her work because it’s ‘sacred’,” she said. “I think it’s most important for parents to not interfere. “When she wants to paint more and more, I told her: ‘As long as you don’t eat the paint, we’re happy.’ We would buy her professional materials, proper brushes and canvas, but she’s also taken many things from nature, like ... feathers.” The young artist’s creations have been praised by art critics from around the world, and many wonder how such a young child can create such mesmerising works of art. “Her concentration is not like that of usual kids, who will go somewhere else after a minute,” Kalashnikova said. Aelita’s paintings also include a sound element. She incorporates the violin into much of her work, both during the creation and presentation of the works, breaking the traditional limits of a visual artist. The abstract artist draws inspirations from nature and the cosmos, in particular from the natural surroundings of her suburban home in Australia. “I’ve got a lot of animals at home – rabbits, guinea pigs and fish – and I get inspiration from them,” she said. “We planted a lot of trees, and we just let them grow however they want into a tropical garden. We’ve got a hammock, and I like sitting on it playing my recorder. “I love nature, and I think people should protect nature. I don’t like humans because they kill nature.” Compared with children in Hong Kong, Aelita is surprisingly stress-free, even given her popularity in the art world. “I’m not under pressure,” she said, adding that she “doesn’t care if people like her art or not”. Her artistic interpretation of the Mah Jong sofa is part of Roche Bobois’ “Art and Life Charity Campaign”, where seven international and local artists and celebrities, including Aelita and graffiti artist and musician MC Yan, transformed the furniture into art pieces to raise money for charity. The sofa will be auctioned off in mid-June during an exclusive charity sale, and all proceeds will go to Art in Hospital, which funds art therapy sessions in hospitals around Hong Kong. Martin Gleize, international director of Roche Bobois, said the Mah Jong sofa was one of its iconic pieces since the 1970s. “It’s a very natural, versatile [piece], and it’s easy to transform it into other things for art expression,” he said. “It’s very much like a blank canvas for the artists to create crazy things; some look like sculptures, some look like paintings, some look like things we’ve never thought of before.” Roche Bobois also invited 100 iconic personalities in Hong Kong to design their very own 3D printed Mah Jong sofa figurine featuring the Chinese character for fortune. All designs will be framed and exhibited at the charity event in mid-June.

Painting before she could walk, 10-year-old Australian abstract artist Aelita Andre has fans all over the world

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Aged four, she opened first solo exhibition in New York City and was the youngest artist to stage a solo show in Russian Academy of Fine Arts Museum

Aged four, she opened first solo exhibition in New York City and was the youngest artist to stage a solo show in Russian Academy of Fine Arts Museum