Fans of modern art can declare a picture the work of a great artist. Their opponents may retort that it could have been done by a small child. In one German gallery, they can both be right.
The Museum for Childhood and Adolescent Works of Famous Artists contains works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Joseph Beuys and Otto Dix - when they were just kids.The gallery, in the town of Halle, is the only one of its kind in the world, curator Ursula Blaschke declares with pride.
She guides visitors around pencil drawings, colorful patterns and some accomplished oil paintings that show how the talent of some of the world's finest artists developed.
"When I started the museum, I thought we had to find a way to mount small exhibitions children can relate to," she says. "If they like it, they'll go to larger galleries later."
This means youngsters have not only provided the gallery's exhibits, they are also regarded as among its most important visitors. Pictures hang low on the walls to allow children to see them in all their glory.
For Blaschke, the gallery also has a serious purpose - to show how early artistic genius can flower and how the characteristics that will make an artist famous are evident even in childhood scribblings.
Assembling the collection was not easy. "These pictures were never made to be exhibited so they remained with the families," says Adolf Eickhorst, who organizes many of the gallery's temporary exhibitions.
"They might have been a Mother's Day present or something like that. They have a special value to the family," he says. "So it is very important to have close contact and good relations with artists' families."
The museum is housed in a 13th century timber-framed building in a picturesque church square. It has served as a prison, a monastery and a courthouse in its colorful history.
One of its star attractions is a pencil drawing by the 3-year-old Klee, later to become famed for painting fantastic figures and geometrical landscapes in a distinctly childish style.
The picture features a family going skating. Blaschke points out that even at such a young age, Klee has embellished the family's skates with spirals - later to become one of the most characteristic leitmotivs of the German artist's work.
"It's like a recurring melody," Eickhorst says. The analogy with music is apt, he adds, pointing out that Mozart was already composing at the age of 7.
Since the museum was founded in 1987, it has brought a certain degree of fame to the small town otherwise known only for its international tennis tournament and more often confused with its larger namesake in eastern Germany.
It has tempted groups as diverse as business managers and monks to venture off the beaten track and discover the pretty rural area and admire the museum's works.
"People now are often only interested in huge halls with hundreds of oil paintings and their insurance value," Blaschke says. "But here in the provinces we have the power to offer an alternative, with the help of the media."
Sunlight streams through the gallery's windows as visitors wander across its bare wooden floors, creating an impression a world away from the stuffier atmosphere of some larger museums.
Picasso is represented by a picture of a bullfight he did at the age of 9. A book on the Spanish cubist beside the picture reveals a similar one by him around 40 years later.