Can you combine Rembrandt, Caravaggio and Hello Kitty? Cesar Santos can. In his recent painting series titled “Syncretism”, Santos skillfully blends different art genres and styles. The Cuban-American artist’s clever amalgamations of divergent art forms result in an interesting pastiche of imagery. Santos draws reference from all different time periods of Art: from Renaissance, Neo-classic, modern and contemporary. Despite elements being of very disparate eras, he still manages to render the images such that they still appear uncannily similar to their references. Santos explains, “In a suggestive and theatrical way I seek to raise questions, to entice one to probe the imagery that I present and attempt to decipher its meaning.” In his re-contextualization of iconic images, he presents the universality of particular themes in art that persist through time. 

“I develop a painting by first working on an idea in a sketchbook, a simple drawing. Then I go to Photoshop and start composing the painting. In a way it’s [how] a classical artist would do it: constructing a color study. Once I have everything composed, tweaking the colors, it will almost look like the final piece. Using oils on linen, I go about painting that image. During the process things change. When I start applying the colors, I start with a raw umber underpainting, and block it in with local color. Even though I’m using modern tools, the process is very classical.”

Visit Carlos Santos‘s website here 

Images via Juxtapoz