Image via Complex Original
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LEGOs aren't just child’s play—professional artists and designers are using the bricks to create striking mosaics and sculptures. Since larger works use hundreds of thousands of individual pieces, LEGO art requires serious amounts of both time and patience.
In recognition of this novel endeavor, we’ve compiled a gallery of the 25 Coolest Works of LEGO Art.
Take a trip down memory lane with these nostalgic masterpieces.
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25. Yellow Man
This is just one of well-known LEGO guru Nathan Sawaya’s amazing sculptures. Sawaya, who began experimenting with the toy bricks in 2000, has had work featured at museums across North America. His sculptures typically contain upwards of a million pieces.
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24. Sea Serpent
Patrolling the waters outside Downtown Disney in Walt Disney World, this massive sea monster named “Brickley” was made from 170,000 LEGO pieces and stretches a winding 30 feet.
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23. Pixel Kiss
A LEGO-version of Roy Lichtenstein’s “Kiss V 1969” this mosaic is composed of 20,000 pieces of five different brick colors. Created by artist Brian Korte, the piece of contemporary art now hangs in a Richmond, Virginia law office.
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22. The Beatles
Made by Henry Lim in 2000, this massive mosaic recreates a famous photo of The Fab Four taken in 1967. Five feet long and two and a half wide, the artwork contains ten different LEGO brick shades.
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21. Brick by Brick
Bernanrd Khoury, who created this original sculpture, was one of the nine architects from the Asia Pacific region that participated in a LEGO exhibition in 2007 and 2008 to raise awareness on architectural preservation in Asia.
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20. The New York Public Library Lions
Half the size of the stone lions that famously guard The New York Public Library, these Lego versions were created to honor the institution’s 100th year at its 5th Avenue location. Nathan Sawaya, mentioned earlier, was commissioned by the city to build the sculptures.
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19. Neon Bike
An advocate of traffic reduction, Sean Kinney rides his bike through New York City every day. To emphasize the advantages of green travel, he built a life-size LEGO bike at the 2011 Brickmagic fan event in Raleigh, North Carolina. The thousands of kids that visited the venue created the clogged-up street that the bike towers over.
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18. Lego-Framed Rainbow
A graphic designer and illustrator, this is Simon C. Page’s first foray into the world of LEGO art. Placing the 1”x1” bricks together took him six hours straight.
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17. Leopard Linger
Part of a series of feminine feline forms, this sculpture debuted at Brickcon 2009, a four-day event held for LEGO enthusiasts. The piece was created with the aid of a 3-D modeling computer program.
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16. Che
Polish LEGO artist Bartosz Kurek’s portrait of Che Guavara, both a revered and despised symbol of counterculture, is based off the graphic version of a famous 1960 photo titled "Guerrillero Heroico." This enduring image of the revolutionary was one of the best-selling posters of the 20th Century.
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15. The Courage Within
Another cool creation from Nathan Sawaya, this is the top half of a full-bodied, life-size sculpture. Journalist Scott Jones explains the artist’s unique style as “Frank Lloyd Wright crossed with Ray Harryhausen or Auguste Rodin crossed with Shigeru Miyamoto.”
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14. Lego Spiral
Over six weeks and using 270,000 white LEGO bricks, Denmark-based Lene Rønsholt Wille built this large circular structure in the central hall of The World Trade Center in Amsterdam. Not just art, the sculpture also functions as a bench and desk for those who work in the building.
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13. Audrey Hepburn
A simple black, white and grey mosaic created by Henry Lim, who produced The Beatles piece featured earlier in the slideshow, this 3’x2.5’ work is based off the Richard Avedon photograph used in the film Funny Face. While Lim admits that this was one of his easier pieces to render, he loves the mosaic’s simple shading.
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12. St. Basil’s Cathedral
Math teacher Arthur Gugick uses LEGO bricks to make to-scale models of famous buildings and landmarks. His work has been featured at BrickFest, the world’s largest LEGO gathering.
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11. Chewbacca
This life-size, seven foot tall Chewie was built in the early 2000’s to mark LEGO’s introduction of a Star Wars product line. A LEGO Darth Vader and Yoda were also created for the event.
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10. Starry Night
Although many well-known LEGO artists have attempted versions of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, our favorite is novice Ed Hall’s 45”x36” rendering that used approximately 10,000 bricks and took several months to complete.
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9. Volvo XC90
Volvo teamed up with LEGOLAND California to create a replica of Volvo’s award-winning SUV. While not functional, the 2,934-pound model managed to trick a LEGOLAND employee whose coworkers replaced his blue XC90 with the toy version as a prank.
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8. Moon Rocket
Robert Blok’s sculpture was inspired by Hergé 's comic book series "Tintin." Unfortunately, only a few pictures were taken before the sculpture blew over in the wind and broke into thousands of pieces. Blok says that the next time he builds a similar piece he’s definitely adding glue.
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7. Nintendo DSi
Nintendo commissioned artist Sean Kenney to create a giant LEGO DSi. The model was on display at the Nintendo World Store in Rockefeller Center for six months in 2009.
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6. Victorian on Mud Heap
One house in a series of abandoned LEGO buildings made by artist Mike Doyle, “Victorian on Mud Heap” is a massive five and a half feet tall and six feet long. The dystopian abode took over 600 hours to complete and is composed of around 120,000 black, white and grey blocks. Amazingly, none of the pieces were altered, cut or painted to achieve the decayed look.
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5. LEGO Lamps
Designer Daniela Pavone has made modernist LEGO lampshades that not only look cool, but cast interesting patterns of light and shadow onto surrounding walls. While the shade pictured casts abstract geometric shapes inspired by painter Piet Mondrian, Pavone has made designs that result in more recognizable patterns, like the New York City skyline.
tiger
4. Tiger
A team of “master builders” from LEGO crafted extremely life-like animals for an exhibit at The Bronx Zoo in 2011. In addition to this tiger, the statues included a flock of flamingos in water, a gorilla family and a six-foot tall giraffe, all located right next to their real-life counterparts.
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3. Iwo Jima
Nathan Sawaya was commissioned to build this replica of the famous flag raising by The National Museum of the Marine Corps, where the piece is on permanent display. Measuring roughly 6.5 ’x 6.5’ x 5’, Sawaya used over 100,000 LEGO bricks.
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2. Stegosaurus
This 14-foot-long dinosaur took Henry Lim seven months to create. “Steggy,” as he’s affectionately called, stands in Lim’s living room, next to a functional harpsichord that he also built from LEGOs. While he normally sells or gives away his work, he couldn't part with his two favorite pieces.
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1. Working Guitar
Sold by a LEGO enthusiast on eBay, this six string is full-size and playable. While the guitar needs to be re-tuned frequently and functions better as a piece of art than an everyday instrument, it’s an awesome collectors’ item for any LEGO-loving musician.