Two-Year-Old’s Paintings Create Buzz, But His Branding Less So

If you’ve ever spent £40 and an entire weekend trying to remove your young children’s artwork from your rented walls, desperately hoping to save your £1,300 deposit, this news might hit you as it did me: with a mix of frustration and disbelief.

A Bavarian toddler, who is already making waves in the art world as Laurent Schwarz, has recently secured a lucrative brand deal with the German paint manufacturer Relius to create a range of colours. Additionally, he has inked a separate deal with a wallpaper company, presumably worth thousands, all inspired by his own creations.

Some of Laurent’s acrylic paintings have sold for more than £5,000, with his mother, Lisa, ensuring that every penny goes into a savings account for him. Dubbed the “pint-sized Picasso,” Schwarz reportedly has hundreds of potential buyers on a waiting list and has already exhibited his first solo show.

This story, of course, brings up age-old questions about art and aesthetics: What separates true art from mere decoration? Is talent a real phenomenon, or is it all about interpretation? Who truly owns a work of art, and who controls its creation? It also forces us to confront the stark realities of wealth inequality in modern society. According to the German federal statistical office, Statistisches Bundesamt, just over 17.3 million people in Germany—about 20.9% of the population—are living in or at risk of poverty and social exclusion. Despite this, there is still plenty of money among the wealthy to spend on paintings and interior décor.

It’s all too easy to be cynical about the art world: the staggering sums of money involved, the celebrity investors, the commodification of creativity, and the nagging feeling of “emperor’s new clothes” that can plague even the most devoted art enthusiasts as they confront seemingly trivial installations sold for exorbitant amounts.

However, ridiculing art is neither new nor particularly meaningful. What I find compelling is the innate human desire for mark-making, building shrines and sculptures, and the appetite for colour and texture that seems to be present in all young children. While I can’t claim this drive is universal, it does appear central to a shared human experience, much like the craving for milk or the need for human touch.

One grey and windswept day in an inner-city playground that felt like a scene from a Soviet-era disaster film, I watched my 14-month-old son spend at least 40 minutes methodically arranging leaves into a fan shape. On another day, he spent an hour placing empty snail shells, stones, and twigs on the stumps of a coppiced tree. Even in my sleep-deprived state, I couldn’t help but think about the inlays and mantels in Skara Brae, the bone carvings found in peat bogs, and the altars of ancient Egypt, reminding me that even 5,000 years ago, when most people were living on the edge of basic subsistence, there was still an urge to create art.

Personally, I’m not a fan of creating “brands” around children. I’ve chosen to keep images of my son off social media as much as possible and to keep any mention of him in my writing vague and anonymous. The idea of promoting his paintings on Instagram and securing brand deals before he turns three doesn’t appeal to me. I already felt guilty enough writing a memoir.

However, I do recognize and appreciate the urge to create, sometimes resulting in genuinely beautiful things, can be as intense in children as it is among art school graduates. It would be wonderful to have a culture and politics that recognized the inherent value of making and expressing for its own sake, rather than viewing it merely as a way to contribute to the economy or as part of a “deal.”