Normal and unusual aspects of juvenile artistic development in Klee, Lautrec, and Picasso

This article integrates material from the biographies of three world‐class artists and material from current social‐science research on the development of creative individuals. The author examined the juvenile drawings of Klee, Lautrec, and Picasso. In this article he describes the ways in which these children's drawings are both “unusual”; and ordinary. Reproductions of drawings are included with the text in order to illustrate and support the observations about the development and quality of the three children's work. The concluding section of this article uses Csiks‐zentmihaly's systems approach to giftedness and proposes that more research is needed to examine the drawing development of children from a variety of cultures and backgrounds. Children to be included in such an investigation range from autistic child artists to children from nonwestern cultures in which the visual arts are singled out for support. In developing a broad collection of case studies, such as the ones proposed, the significant characteristics of the visually gifted child may emerge in sharper focus.