What If Picasso Had Rendered His Art, Instead Of Painting It?

Pablo Picasso’s paintings are masterpieces of two-dimensional form. But what would it look like if Picasso had lived today–and had used 3D modeling and digital rendering tools instead of paint and canvas?

The Pakistan-based designer and artist Omar Aqil set out to reimagine some of the most iconic Picasso works using 3D modeling in his project Mimic. The results are brilliant, hyperrealistic still life images that still evoke the same cubist dynamism–but through sculptural forms.

[Images: courtesy Omar Aqil]
Aqil chose to reimagine six paintings from Picasso’s oeuvre, including 1937’s Seated Woman and 1946’s Monument to the Spaniard. After modeling his own interpretations of the pieces, he used V-Ray for Cinema 4D–a rendering software that’s common amongst architects and product designers, among other creative professionals–along with Photoshop and Illustrator to recreate the paintings.
His versions aren’t exact replicas; they look almost like carefully crafted interior-design photo shoots, or found sculptures, drawing in details and materials that the artist never imagined. “It’s really difficult to me to recreate the artwork of Pablo Picasso,” Aqil tells Co.Design in an email. “I have been studying his artworks since I have started my career, his abstract visual language always inspired me and I have found new forms interacting with each other.”

While we’ll never know what Picasso would have done if he had the digital tools of today, Mimic nevertheless updates his iconic geometries and offers a new spin on an old classic.