Rocco Ritchie, aka Rhed, revealed as Madonna's son

The mysterious neo-expressionist painter Rhed, selling works for around £25,000 each, has been outed as Rocco Ritchie, the 21-year-old son of Madonna and Guy Ritchie. Raised between New York and London, he studied at Central Saint Martins and the Royal Drawing School, and has exhibited at Tanya Baxter Contemporary Gallery in Chelsea since 2018. The New York Post's gossip column PageSix identified him after sightings of his parents at his shows. Tanya Baxter describes his oil-on-canvas works as balancing "psychological tension" with "playfully looming figures on a monochrome abstract background, exuding a compelling mix of innocence and confidence." Critics are divided: supporters like Mervyn Davies (former Royal Academy president) call him one of the few artists who "can make you think and provoke emotions," and art writer Godfrey Barker calls him "an authentic, pure, undiluted product of the 21st century." Detractors include Guardian critic Jonathan Jones, who dismisses the works as "clumsy adolescent efforts with no sign of originality or vigor," and The White Pube (Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad), who say the paintings "look like AI copying Modigliani, Fauvism, lesser-known Picassos, and a Bacon style to create works that seem old and very old," concluding there's nothing new about a successful art-world kid with "famous and incredibly rich parents."