Crossover: When Pop Culture Meets the Old Masters
A series of original pop art paintings by Marco Santos that reimagine classical masterpieces through the lens of modern pop culture icons.
What if timelines could bend, and universes separated by centuries collided on a canvas?
Crossover: When Pop Culture Meets the Old Masters imagines a world where characters from comics, cinema and animation are integrated into the visual language of Renaissance altarpieces, baroque compositions and classical portraiture. These paintings exist in a visual multiverse, where the sacred, the pop, and the divine coexist in a dimension as improbable as it is harmonious.
Throughout art history, painters have told stories using figures their contemporaries instantly recognized — saints, mythological beings, biblical heroes. In this series, Marco Santos follows the same impulse, but with today’s icons. Superheroes, animated characters and film figures step into these roles, redefining the visual mythology of our time.
Some works reinterpret specific classical compositions; others are original creations that evoke the tone and structure of historical painting. But all belong to an alternative timeline, where history, fiction and pop culture merge into new narratives.
A way of rethinking art history through the language of pop culture — with irony, memory, and a deep respect for both traditions.
This gallery showcases my recent artistic works.
Click to explore the available works in the selected galleries.
