The Happy Six-Year-Old

Progressive schoolchildren of seven are sometimes heard to mourn their lost youth. Artistically they are often in a state of decline, having begun making an effort to paint neatly and representationally instead of splashing about. Their bumbling attempts to create intelligible pictures are rarely so fine and free as the fruits of innocence. Luckily Painter Hiroshi Nishida is only six, but his first one-man show, scheduled to open in a Tokyo gallery this week, may well be his last.

Nishida has a solid year of experience behind him. It began the day he slipped into his artist father's studio, locked out his younger brother, whom he was supposed to be taking care of, and painted a picture which won a prize in a children's art contest.

For the past six months Artist Nishida has been painting furiously, getting ready for his show. His works vary in size depending on what his father has handy in the way of stock. One 3 ft. by 5 ft. picture took him a whole day to finish; the little ones he knocks off in a couple of hours.

No one except Nishida could describe the subjects of his art, and he declines to do so. His paintings are made up of solid masses of pure color, often applied with big brushes which he wields like two-handed swords. "My heart sinks," confessed his father last week, "to see the boy take a whole tube of color and squeeze it on to canvas. They cost at least 300 yen. But he knows how to get proper effects."

Naturally enough, the 3-ft. genius' favorite painter is Picasso, but his father tries to keep him away from museums ("I don't want him to be influenced"). At school the boy is not considered much of a painter, though he has won local renown as a poet with such lines as these:

A toy truck;

It sparkles, it sparkles.

Outside it is green,

Inside it is. pink.

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