‘Pre-school Picasso’ shakes up art world
Mikail Akar doesn’t flinch as the cameras click around him. Born in 2012, the German artistic prodigy has spent half his life in the limelight.
With his striped jumper, goofy grin and dreams of becoming a professional footballer, Akar seems just like any other seven-year-old boy.
Yet the Cologne-born youngster is actually an expressionist whizz kid who has taken the international art scene by storm.
Dubbed the “pre-school Picasso” by German media, Akar’s paintings now sell for thousands of euros (dollars) to buyers from across the world.
“At just seven years old, he is established in the art world. There is interest from Germany, France and the USA,” his father and manager, Kerem Akar, told AFP.
Akar senior discovered Mikail’s precocious talent by chance several years ago, when he gifted his son a canvas and some handprint paints for his fourth birthday.
“We had already bought him enough cars and action figures, so we had the idea of getting him a canvas,” Kerem Akar said.
“The first picture looked fantastic, and I thought at first that my wife had painted it.”
“I thought maybe it was just coincidence, but by the second and third pictures it was clear he had talent.”
Akar’s talent is visible in his latest collection, a collaboration with Germany and Bayern Munich football star Manuel Neuer.
One work in the collection was recently sold for 11,000 euros ($12,000), with proceeds going to Neuer’s children’s charity.
An explosion of colour reminiscent of Jackson Pollock, the piece is typical of Akar’s abstract expressionist style.
The seven-year-old tells AFP that his idols include Pollock, Michael Jackson and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
He has also developed his own techniques, which include applying paint by punching the canvas with his father’s boxing gloves.
At a presentation of Akar’s new work at a private gallery in Berlin last month, one visitor said she was “speechless” upon discovering that the artist was a child who was just starting primary school.
“The balance and harmony of the composition -- I wouldn’t expect that from a child,” Arina Daehnick, a photographer from Berlin, told AFP.
Diana Achtzig, director of the Achtzig Gallery for Contemporary Art in Berlin, said she was impressed by Akar’s “imagination and variation”.
“As long as he has someone supporting him and not exploiting him, then he has a great future ahead of him,” she said.
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