A. Cohen Pinxit

Washington Avenue is a residential street that cuts due north and south through the low rolling hills of The Bronx. It begins north of the Harlem River where the Third Avenue Elevated slices off on the bias, and it ends, some 40 blocks beyond, at the campus of Fordham University. In its most populous stretch, between Claremont and Tremont, it is a cheerful, neighborly street, where on the summer evenings Jewish housewives lean from their windows or sit in chairs drawn out on the sidewalks, where kids on roller skates coast down the slight slope and where the tumult of a thousand conversations, of hundreds of mothers calling their children, is an antiphony to the sound of passing motors.

This neighborhood is the stamping ground of Alfred Cohen. Alfred is a small, blond, wiry eight-year-old boy who lives with his parents and an older brother and sister on the fifth floor of a walk-up apartment house. Directly across the street is Bronx House, where there is a dance every Wednesday night, where the dramatic club occasionally puts on shows like H.M.S. Pinafore, where the free art class of the Federal Art Project meets daily.

Seven months ago Alfred joined the class and began turning out pictures at the rate of three a day. He ran home from P.S. 42, where he was in the fourth grade (he would have skipped a grade except that he got scarlet fever), drank a glass of milk, and hurried across the street to paint, using an old muffin tin for a palette. "His talent," said his awed teacher, Philip Bibel, "is accompanied by the most amazing energy I have ever encountered.'' He painted cowboys, G-Men, scenes from movies, elevated trains, football players, his playmates, views of Claremont Parkway and Washington Avenue, and the scene that meets the suburban eye as frequently as any other--women pushing baby carriages. His figures were recognizable, except that, as in most child's drawings, the legs were frail and extended; but he used whatever colors fitted his general composition, getting red or green skies if they seemed right, and slapping on his color boldly without bothering with a preliminary sketch.

Last week 40 of his best paintings were exhibited at Bronx House. Although 11,000 New York children study each month at 128 Federal Art Project classes in Greater New York, his was the first one-man show of students trained in them. Commented on warmly by Manhattan critics, it made a greater sensation on Washington Avenue. "Congratulations with your son!" said neighbor ladies to Mrs. Cohen, as photographs of Alfred appeared in the newspapers. With mild irony Mr. Cohen, who is a house painter, said that he could not see what all the excitement was about, since it did not look as if there was any money in it. Teacher Bibel was divided between his pride in Alfred's progress and his fear that the boy might get a swelled head.

As for Alfred, he got a slightly hunted look, had to be captured by his mother and held firmly by the shoulder to be interviewed. As cryptic as a surrealist in explaining his art, Alfred said he just painted whatever popped into his head. When asked how it happened, in his painting of a devil, that the crimson body wore black tights but the horns were white, he said darkly, "Maybe he fell in the snow."

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