By: UFIRST Art Production

He was eight years old, bored during a pandemic, and convinced that his drawings were ugly. Then his mother looked at them, and everything changed. Six years later, his work has been shown in Venice, Tokyo, Florence, Las Vegas, and Miami. His name is Maximiliano Torres Leal. The world knows him as Maxtorrle.

It Started With a No

The origin of Maxtorrle’s story is the kind that stays with you. It was the pandemic. The world had stopped. An eight-year-old boy in Villarrica, a small city in southern Chile nestled near a volcano and a lake, was restless and bored. His mother, Roxana Leal, suggested he draw. He said no. Why? Because other children had made fun of his drawings. Because he had decided, at eight years old, that his art was ugly and therefore not worth making.

His mother asked to see them anyway. She looked at them carefully. And then she said: “They are not ugly. They are wonderful.”

Something shifted in that moment. “I felt that my hands went crazy when I drew,” Maximiliano recalls. “I told my mom, look, there is a world inside my drawings.” From that day forward, he never stopped creating. And he never stopped believing in himself.

From Villarrica to Venice, Tokyo, and Beyond

What followed is a story that most artists, at any age, would spend a lifetime working toward. Maximiliano, entirely self-taught, began with digital art before moving into mixed techniques on canvas, combining acrylics, pastels, and digitally-intervened Fine Art formats that blend the traditional with the contemporary. His works are immediate and unmistakable. Worlds of expressive force, populated by characters that emerge from lines, colors, and shapes as if they had always been waiting inside the paint.

By age twelve, he had already exhibited at some of the most important art fairs in Chile, including Art Week Chile at the Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho in Santiago. At thirteen, he opened his solo exhibition “Manos Locas” at the Universidad de La Frontera. And at the Venice Biennale 2024, as part of the collective exhibition “Sangre Latina” at the Palazzo Mora, organized by the South Trip Art Gallery, Maximiliano became the youngest Chilean and Latin American artist among 192 exhibitors from over 51 countries. He was twelve years old.

His work has since traveled to galleries in Florence and Tokyo. Three of his paintings were exhibited in Las Vegas. He has participated three times in Art Week Chile, earning a Mención Honrosa al Talento Joven, an Honorable Mention for Young Talent, at its tenth anniversary edition. He has been recognized as one of the 109 Young Talents of La Araucanía region. And next on his itinerary, the Spectrum Miami art fair.

The Mountains, the Volcano, and the World Inside

Maximiliano grew up in Villarrica, a place of extraordinary natural beauty, surrounded by the Villarrica Volcano, ancient forests, and the culture of the Mapuche people who have inhabited this land for centuries. That setting is not just a backdrop to his story. It is woven into the character of his art. His works have depicted the volcano, the palafitos of Chiloé, and the Selk’nam people. The visual and cultural heritage of Chile rendered through the filter of a young imagination that refuses to be ordinary.

His inspiration comes from lived experience and from what he calls “lo que nace de mi imaginación,” what is born from his imagination. Many of his works are created through free, uninstructed movement of his hands, allowing the work to speak to him as it emerges. Characters appear between lines, colors, and shapes, as if summoned rather than planned.

A Stage That Matches the Moment

That spirit of genuine, uninhibited creative expression resonates with contemporary art spaces around the world, including the upcoming Hamptons Private Art Experience on June 7, 2026, in Southampton, New York, produced by Jason Perez and UFIRST Art Production. The event marks another step in a calendar that has already taken his work to Italy, Japan, and across the United States.

A Message for Children Who Doubt Their Drawings

If there is a thread that runs through everything Maximiliano Torres Leal has said and done, it is this. He wants to reach the children who are where he once was. The ones who have been told, by peers, by silence, by self-doubt, that their art is not worth making. He wants to show them, through his own story, that the world inside their drawings is real, and that it is worth everything.

“From my art, I can motivate and encourage more children and young people to believe in and create art,” he says. At fourteen, he has already done exactly that, on stages in Chile, Italy, Japan, and the United States. He is only just beginning.