4-year-old Aelita Andre artists youngest earning painter

Aelita Andre's parents, 4-year-old Aelita Andre artists youngest earning painter both artists, are certain that their daughter is a bona fide Abstract Expressionist painter. The Australian girl has been crawling around on canvases since she was about 9 months old, according to her dad Michael Andre, and she made her first piece of authentic art just a few months later. Now, at the ripe old age of 4, she's got her own show in New York, "The Prodigy of Color" at the Agora Gallery in Chelsea. And she just sold three of her paintings for a cool $27,000.

Angela Di Bello, the gallery's director, chose Aelita's artwork without knowing the little girl's age. "I saw great colors, great movement, great composition and very playful, and I thought, 'This is fantastic. Who is this person?' Only to find out, she's a child," Di Bello told NBC New York. The 24 paintings on exhibit at the Agora Gallery are priced from $4,400 to $10,000 each. In 2009, one of her paintings (created when she was just 2 years old) sold for $24,000 during a Hong Kong exhibition.

"Every parent thinks their child is gifted, and this is why we thought we really had to go and look for professional advice," her mother, Russian artist Nikka Kalashnikova, said.

Aelita is facing a similar skepticism, even if she doesn't know it yet. "We took her to MoMA yesterday," her mother told the New York Post this week. "And she was so upset that we were taking her to see other artists' work instead of going to her own exhibition."

What do you think? Cool, yes. But is it genius? Or just a kid who really likes to play with paint? 4-year-old Aelita Andre artists youngest earning painter

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