It is not often that the painting of a child startles the viewer. But this is exactly the effect that Annie Kevans 30 paintings of various dictators as children have. The simple water-colours which are part of an exhibition called 'Paper' depicting faces (some actual, some invented) of dictators as children—apart from Adolph Hitler, Nicolae Ceausescu and Saddam Hussein, the paintings use real archival material.
The portraits are exhibited in a simple rectangular space in the Saatchi Gallery and except for a list of the names of the subjects of the paintings in the corner, a veritable list of some of the world's most vile men, the room was devoid of any other clutter. Initially I backtracked out of the room and went to ask one of the staff members where the 'dictators' paintings' were, to which he replied 'oh you mean the boys,' and then pointed me back towards the room. This encounter in itself spoke volumes about the assumptions I had made before even setting eyes on the works of art.