Italian artist marries Lego men with the Masters

They say nothing is new under the sun but if you’re going to poach and pillage the past, you may as well do it in ironic style. Like Italian artist Stefano Bolcato who recently took inspiration from famous portraits by art masters and replicated them with Lego faces in place of the original icons for his exhibition ‘People’.

Famous works by Botticelli (see his portrait of ‘Dante’ above), Frida Kahlo, Da Vinci and even Andy Warhol have been turned into quasi-comical and yet just-as-genius post-postmodern works of art.

The costumes look the same but in the place of each subject’s face is a great big yellow Lego head.

But this isn’t some cheap photoshop post-production effect, rather it is expertly applied oil on canvas, each brushstroke as delicately placed as when the original artists created their works (well, perhaps not Warhol who preferred the cheaper process of stencilling).

Stefano Bolcato: Andy Warhol’s ‘Marilyn’.

Indeed, Bolcato studied serious art in Rome at schools guided by the respected likes of Alfonso Avanessian and Giovanni Arcangeli.

While his exhibition in Salerno is short-lived, these quirky images are sure to start doing the rounds on the real gallery that matters in our new age: the world wide interweb.

Like!  Antonino Tati

Stefano Bolcato’s ‘People’ is on at the Museo Archeologica Provinciale di Salerno until Sunday 22 January… if you happen to be in Italy!

Stefano Bolcato: Piero della Francesca’s ‘Duke’.

Stefano Bolcato: Piero della Francesca’s ‘Duchess’.

Stefano Bolcato: Frida Kahlo’s ‘Self-portrait’.

Stefano Bolcato: Pollaiolo’s ‘Dame’.

Stefano Bolcato: Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘La Belle Ferronniere’.