Germany: the art of children.

"I prefer children of three to children of four. Only what is already in a child's soul at age five is permanent." The painter and sculptor Antje Tesche Mentzen knows what she's talking about: For thirty years, she has been running Germany's oldest drawing school for children.

If you want to go down into the cellar of her fin-de-siecle house, just follow the voices. A dozen children are sitting around huge tables concentrating on their work, but also ready to exchange the latest news from school. It's striking that all of them do not only have their eyes on their own work, but also on their neighbor's piece of paper. They comment on what they see without criticizing. Is it possible to learn more in this school than painting and pottery?

We keep on watching. The children in this class are between ages 10 and 14. There are also classes for pre-school kids. Even high school students specializing in art come here.

This afternoon, two older girls are working with clay. They want to finish their bowls, some of them simple and some with a wavy rim. The younger children paint on the theme, "Me in the New Millennium" Antje and her children hope that they will be invited to Washington to represent Germany at ICAF's 2003 Festival.

They have good prospects. The children are working on the theme in a highly creative, individual and diverse manner. One of the boys, whose dad is an architect, creates a futuristic house of piled-up balls of glass. Many draw robots as if they could be taken for granted--who else should do all the drudgery?

For a highly imaginative girl, life in the new millennium is a happy trip on the train in shades of red. A more pensive eleven-year-old deals with shrinking space in his picture--people, buildings, everything is tiny. He draws a protective cover around it, symbolizing the ozone layer.

"Because of the hole in the ozone layer. I think that's gonna happen!"

A prospective journalist expects a lot from the new millennium. In a daring layout, she has created a paper called "The New One", which covers sensational discoveries and inventions. Headlines include:

NEW PART OF THE BODY DISCOVERED!

and

THE FIRST CAR POWERED BY WATER!

It is clear the children love and highly respect Antje. She circles the class, bringing wax crayons and fresh water for their paint brushes.

"I only encourage their imagination. First of all, I think that every child is gifted and has to be encouraged. Then, I gently show him or her a way to put a thought on paper. It is important to me to show the kids again and again: This can be done completely differently as well. I really preach this. Sometimes, I talk to them about my own work, about my own problems and they are proud and feel a bit like being talked to as colleagues. This is something an art teacher at school can offer. And there's something else that is crucial: The sentence "This is not nice--a tree doesn't look like this" is an absolute taboo with me. It kills so much."

There's no language boundary for art--including, of course, the art of children. It is understood all over the world. The book "The Art of Children" with works from Antje Tesche-Mentzen's drawing school (published at Frederking & Thaler) is a document of joyful creativity and a hopeful "yes" to the world.