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How This Italian Artist Creates Rubik's Cube Mosaic Portraits
Posted
March 15, 2019
Views
18,942
Likes
349
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1.94%
March 15, 2019
18,942
349
18
1.94%
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Giovanni Contardi is a 24-year-old artist who uses hundreds of Rubik's Cubes to make mosaic portraits. Some of faces featured in his work include Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams, Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl, Will Smith, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and the late Amy Winehouse. Giovanni solves hundreds of cubes in a matter of hours – his quickest being just one hour and 40 minutes.
Italian artist Giovanni Contardi isn't exactly a cubist, but he is making a name for himself by using a particularly tricky medium for his art. Contardi, 24, can turn hundreds of Rubik's Cubes into massive portraits bearing the likenesses of celebrities like LeBron James, Rihanna and Justin Timberlake.
The first Rubik's Cube portrait that Contardi sold — of the late-singer Amy Winehouse — brought in roughly $5,000, he says. But the highest price one of his portraits has fetched so far is $29,000, he says, which came last year from a private buyer who commissioned the portrait because he "wanted to surprise his wife for Christmas," Contardi tells CNBC Make It.
"[I]t's all real Rubik's Cubes, it's a handmade frame, there is a tons of hours of work."
It typically takes Contardi "at least three or four weeks" to complete each incredibly realistic portrait, much of which involves planning out a patterned design that uses the six colors available to him — a six-sided Rubik's Cube puzzle is made up of white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow squares.
Contardi likes to make portraits, usually based on existing photos of celebrities, because he says he has "a passion for facial expressions, and so I always kind of challenge myself with different facial expression and how I can make them seem real with just the color of Rubik's Cubes."
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This Artist Creates Rubik's Cube Mosaic Portraits
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