1 . Most artists have to wait decades for their talents to be recognized. Some, like Dutch painter Van Gogh, only achieve _______ after they die. But this is not the _______ for Andres Valencia. The 11-year-old boy has already _______ millions selling his contemporary paintings to art collectors.

Andres’ parents are art lovers and collectors. They began _______ Andres to modern paintings when he was just a kid. The young boy soon began _______ famous artworks with great accuracy. His father, Lupe, says, “When he was 4 or 5, my wife and I would _______ him paint and do sketches(素描), and we were really surprised at what he would do.”

By age six, the _______ artist was selling his watercolor paintings to family and friends for $20 a piece. Over time. Andres began creating large-scale paintings with a _______ of oil stick and oil and acrylic paints. His masterpieces were all _______ contemporary artists like Picasso.

Bernie Chase, a family friend and owner of an art gallery, recognized Andres’ __________ from the start. He bought the young boy’s artwork every time he __________ and even paid $5,000 for one. In 2022, the young boy held his first __________ at Chase’s gallery. The 35 paintings __________ were sold for between $50,000 and $125,000 each.

When not painting, Andres is a __________ fifth-grader with math homework. “My son is an artist, but he is a __________ first.” His mother said. “He is a child, not a celebrity.”

2 . Najma Hashi (also named Nujuum) is a respected female artist, whose paintings are winning a global following. But Nujuum is not your _________ next-generation rising star. Nujuum, 26, grew up in Somalia, where new artists, especially female ones, are _________ from pursuing art.

This young artist grew up in a _________ living environment, which she has _________ to watching a horror movie: war, drought, poverty and hunger. Since Nujuum was seven, _________ Nujuum went, she felt moved to paint. As a child, on her way home from school, she would sit by the _________ and draw pictures in the sand. “I was thinking of creating my own little world, getting away from the _________. Art has always been a form of _________ for me.” As she went through school, she drew a whole city on her bedroom wall using her school pencils.

However, Nujuum was _________ that art isn’t a respected profession in her country. “Art, __________, in the Somalian community is not a good thing to do,” she says. Her mother did not share her dreams, nor did her neighbors who considered them __________.

This __________ made her give up art for a while. However, she realized that she had a __________: “Either I continue drawing and painting and create a beautiful life or I stay unhappy for the rest of my life.” Finally, Nujuum turned her __________ in art into something she could make a living from.

She __________ opening a school one day for other talented local artists, enabling them to choose art as a career too.

3 . Beethoven was a great musician. One evening, young Beethoven was out for a walk. As he was passing a wooden house, he ________ someone inside practicing one piece of his music. He stopped to listen, and a girl said that she wished she could hear a real ________ play it.

Beethoven went into the house, ________ the young lady at the piano was blind. A young man stood beside her. Beethoven asked ________, “Would you mind me playing for you?” ________ they didn’t know who the stranger was, the lady and the man said yes happily. Beethoven sat at the piano and began to play. He played so well that all of them lost themselves in the beautiful music. Even when the lonely candle in the room ________ and the moon shone brightly through the window, he was ________ playing!

When Beethoven left the house, the moon seemed even ________ in the night sky. He was deeply ________ by the young lady’s love for his music and was greatly encouraged by the beautiful night. He rushed back home ________ and spent the whole night writing down the music that he had played at the blind girl’s house.

This is a story of “Moonlight Sonata”, one of the classics in the history of music.

4 . About the year 1900, a small, dark-haired boy was often seen waiting outside the back entrances of theatres in London. His name was Charlie Chaplin. He looked thin and hungry but his blue eyes were determined. He was hoping to get work in show business(娱乐界).

When Chaplin couldn’t get_________, he wandered about the city_________. He found food and shelter(栖身之处)_________he could. Sometimes he was sent away to a home for children who had no parents. He was cold and miserable there and the children were beaten for the_________fault.

By the time he was thirty, Charlie had been the greatest, best-known and best-loved_________in the world. Chaplin’s films have_________a large audience in various countries. Anyone who visited the cinema_________must have seen some of Charlie Chaplin’s funny films. People everywhere who have seen them would_________until tears run down their faces. Even people who don’t understand English can enjoy Chaplin’s films because they are mostly_________. It isn’t what he says that makes people laugh. It depends upon little____________that mean the same thing to people all over the world.

Having lived in America for 40 years, Chaplin____________to Switzerland. There he died on Christmas Day of 1977. He once described himself____________a citizen of the world, rather than of any____________country.

He once wrote, “You have to believe in yourself. That’s the____________of success. Even when I was in the children’s home, when I was wandering about the streets trying to find enough food to____________to keep alive, I still thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world.”

5 . Pablo Ruiz Picasso’s family moved to Barcelona in the autumn of 1895, and Pablo entered the local art academy, where his father had assumed his last post as professor of drawing. The family hoped that their son would achieve success as an academic _____ , and in 1897 his eventual _____ in Spain seemed assured; in that year his painting Science and Charity, for which his father modelled for the doctor, was _____ an honourable mention in Madrid at the Fine Arts Exhibition.

The Spanish capital was the _____ next stop for the young artist intent on gaining recognition and _____ family expectations. Pablo duly set off for Madrid in the autumn of 1897 and entered the Royal Academy of San Fernando. But finding the teaching there _____ , he increasingly spent his time recording life around him, in the cafes, on the streets, and in the Prado, where he discovered Spanish painting. Works by those and other _____ would capture Picasso’s imagination at different times during his long career.

Picasso fell _____ in the spring of 1898 and spent most of the _____ year convalescing(逐步康复) in the Catalan village of Horta de Ebro in the company of his Barcelona friend Manuel Pallares. When Picasso ______ Barcelona in early 1899, he was a changed man: he had put on weight; he had learned to live on his own in the open countryside; he spoke ______ ; and, most importantly, he had made the decision to break with his art-school training and to reject his family’s plans for his future. He even began to show a ______ preference for his mother’s surname, and more often than not he signed his works P. R. Picasso; by late 1901 he had dropped the Ruiz altogether.

In Barcelona Picasso moved among a circle of Catalan artists and writers whose eyes were turned ______ Paris. Those were his friends at the café Els Quatre Gats (“The Four Cats”, styled after the Chat Noir (“Black Cat”) in Paris), where Picasso had his first Barcelona exhibition in February 1900, and they were the ______ of more than 50 portraits in the show. In addition, there was a dark, moody “modernista” painting, Last Moments (later painted over), showing the visit of a ______ to the bedside of a dying woman, a work that was accepted for the Spanish section of the Exposition Universelle in Paris in that year. Eager to see his own work in place and to experience Paris firsthand, Picasso set off in the company of his studio mate Carles Casagemas (Portrait of Carles Casagemas, 1899) to conquer, if not Paris, at least a corner of Montmartre.

6 . Joao Carlos Martins is a famous pianist and conductor. However, his career has been ________ and his life has taken him in many different ________.

As a teenager Martins began to perform in concerts. But in his late twenties, he had to ________ after badly breaking his arm. It was really a terrible time. He couldn’t look at a piano or ________ listen to music. ________, he decided to become the manager of a boxer, who won the world championship later. This ________ Martins to take up the piano and practise much harder. Six years later, he gave his first concert at the Carnegie Hall, which was the most ________ moment of his life. He performed in concerts for years before he had to quit because of the unbearable ________ in his hands caused by too much ________.

Martins, in his forties, became a politician. However, he couldn’t stand this ________, so once again, he went back to the piano. All was going well until something unexpected ________ while leaving a concert. He ________ a serious brain injury and lost all the movement in his right hand. Again, with great ________ he played just with his left hand. Years later he lost the use of the left hand and ________ himself a conductor. Now, in his late seventies, Martins is still taking ________ to work and has conducted over a thousand concerts.

7 . Mariah Reading is an environmentalist, who grew up with an early appreciation for nature. While studying art at Bowdoin College, she saw the vast amounts of_______from her painting and sculpture classes. She began to seriously consider her footprint as a(n)_________“How can I paint landscapes if I’m _________them?” she thought. Then she started using the refuse as her canvas (画布).

After graduation, Mariah travelled throughout the country,_________ rubbish to bring to her studio. One day, a_________ hubcap (轮毂盖) she found by the side of the road gave her a new ___________ . She noticed the half hubcap had cracked off to_________the line of the mountain range that she was in. So she_________ the mountain landscape on it and held it up in front of the real _________ and took a photo. It became the first in her __________ series.

Over the years, she has painted more than 100 pieces of rubbish and photographed her transformations__________matching real-life landscapes. It’s like __________ new life into forgotten objects. Her practice__________the principle of “leaving no trace” by __________ painting with sculpture and photography.

Mariah hopes people see themselves and their own habits __________ into her works and make small changes in their everyday lives.