Mysterious artist turns out to be Madonna's son | Art & Literature

Art & LiteratureRocco Ritchie (21) has already sold some of his paintings for a lot of money under the mysterious pseudonym Rhed. But when it was revealed that Rhed is none other than the eldest son of Madonna (63), many people frowned. Opinions are therefore divided on whether his success is due to talent or to his parents.

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21-year-old Rocco Ritchie, the son of Madonna and her ex-husband Guy Ritchie, is said to have quietly developed as an expressionist painter. He has had a number of shows at the Tanya Baxter Contemporary gallery in Chelsea, West London since 2018. But since PageSix exposed Ritchie, opinions have been divided as to whether his success is due to his talent or the fame of his parents.

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That Ritchie is Rhed is hard to dispute. Both are the same age, grew up in identical cities, and attended the Royal Drawing School. In 2020, Madonna and Guy Ritchie even briefly reunited at the Tanya Baxter Contemporary, for a then-unnamed exhibition.

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According to Tanya Baxter, the gallery’s curator, Rhed uses thickly applied oil paint and gestural brushstrokes for his depictions of the human form. While his paintings have “psychological tension,” he balances this out by using a colorful palette and painting “playfully looming figures in the center of the canvas, often against a monochromatic abstract backdrop,” Baxter says.

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But not everyone is equally convinced of Ritchie’s talent. The Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones claimed the artist had come into the public eye too early: “His paintings are clumsy adolescent attempts without any sign of originality,” Jones said. “Of course that doesn’t mean he can’t become a better artist. Painting takes work. Therefore, it is a shame that Rhed has been put in the spotlight, while at the moment he is not yet a real artist. They are amateur pieces, vague imitations of Picasso, which could have been made by a million other young people.”

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