Social media influencers dominate the digital landscape with carefully curated shots and perfectly posed selfies. This artist is turning this modern phenomenon on its head by reimagining some of history’s most iconic artworks through a contemporary lens.

Meet UntitledSave, a digital collage artist from Porto, Portugal, who’s bridging the gap between classical art and modern social media culture. Through their innovative digital recreations, timeless masterpieces are transformed into what they might look like if their subjects were contemporary influencers.

The Art of Digital Transformation

UntitledSave’s work poses an intriguing question: What if the subjects of classical paintings had Instagram accounts? The results are both thought-provoking and surprisingly natural. Frida Kahlo becomes a self-aware selfie queen, while the enigmatic Mona Lisa transforms into a lifestyle blogger with that same mysterious smile we’ve wondered about for centuries.

These recreations do more than simply modernize classical works—they offer commentary on how self-presentation and artistic expression have evolved in the digital age. The artist cleverly maintains the essence of each original masterpiece while incorporating modern elements that feel surprisingly authentic to both time periods.

Notable Transformations Include:

• Frida Kahlo reimagined as a modern-day self-portrait artist and body positivity advocate
• The Mona Lisa as a lifestyle influencer, complete with subtle product placement
• Venus de Milo transformed into a fitness influencer
• Girl with a Pearl Earring as a jewelry and fashion blogger

The Untitled.Save Interview

What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Cyclist

What’s your background?
I attended a hairdressing course and have a degree in Product Design

What piece are you most proud of?
The one I’m yet to create

What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
“Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today” (I rarely follow this advice)

What is one thing they tried to teach you in school that you knew immediately was wrong?
We all have the same rights

Who is the one person, dead or alive, that you would like to have dinner with and why?
I would love to have dinner with the artist JR at the yellow house in Brazil

Where is your favorite place?
It’s always wherever I’m not

Who are your biggest influences?
Salvador Dalí and Rui Reininho

Which current art world trends are you following?
I’m paying close attention to AI developments. I’ve tried it, but I haven’t yet found a personal identity in it, which is why I’ve never published anything

What can’t you live without?
Music

What is your dream project?
To have an exhibition or project in Portugal. So far, the opportunities I’ve had have always been abroad

What’s your favorite artwork?
It’s hard to pick just one, but for many months now, I’ve had Albrecht Dürer’s Praying Hands painting on the screen of my phone

What is currently on your playlist?
Vacances, L’Impératrice
Acorda, Cristina Massena
Sacatela, La Femme

What are your last three Google searches?
I don’t want to destroy my reputation haha

What gives you life?
Music

What is your superpower?
Knowing how to say no

What is your Kryptonite?
What’s that?

If you could visit any artist’s studio, whose would you visit and why?
Iryna Maksymova. In the midst of the war in Ukraine, she didn’t leave the country and continues to bring a little light to the world with her art

What ideas are you currently pondering or questioning?
How can the human race be so beautiful and twisted at the same time?

What do most people believe that you do not?
Zodiac signs

What is your favorite thing in the world?
Bacalhau à Brás

If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be, and why?
Banksy. Because of the anonymity of that collaboration

What’s next for you?
Dinner

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Bringing vibrant color to quite bleak subjects, Zubieta explores the millennial culture and its issues through pink-tinted glasses, neon colors, and dreamy characters. Zubieta found in Alice the perfect metaphor to explore the reality she was living in during the outburst of Covid-19.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland represents the child’s struggle to survive in the confusing world of adults. To understand our adult world, Alice has to overcome the open-mindedness that is characteristic of children. Apparently, adults need rules to live by. Going down the rabbit hole: in the book is a representation of going into the unconscious, connected with lockdown, Covid-19 seems to be the hole that has trapped us all at home, forcing us to deal with our inner monsters but also with the voice we listen to the most; the mass media.

Interview with Pop-Surrealist Marta Zubieta

Q. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
A. I wanted to be a veterinarian until the age of 10, then I brought my cat to be castrated and everything changed.

Q. What’s your background?
A. I studied fine arts in Sevilla, Spain, but I didn’t make the most of it or I didn’t know how I could ever get “real work” out of it so I started studying graphic design alongside. 
Before I moved to Bristol I was a poor long-time intern graphic designer during the day and session singer at night. Once in Bristol, with my “Spanglish” it was hard (impossible) to find a job in the design industry. I worked in hospitality for a long period while playing music and just trying to do illustration for fun, I even stopped painting for a while. But I think all that working at night, the music, the street art, and the collaborative spirit of the city gave me the push I needed to connect my passions into my paintings and illustrations which have now become my main work and which I am very grateful for now.

Q. What piece are you most proud of?
A. I particularly like my “Alice in Wonderland” series because I feel with it I really grasped the power that pop culture has for communicating controversial ideas.

Q. What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
A. You can do everything you want, but just don’t get caught. (Not sure it is the best, but it makes me laugh.)

Q. What is one thing they tried to teach you in school that you knew immediately was wrong?
A. The hierarchy of power, The catholic religion, and Iceberg lettuce.

Q. Where is your favorite place?
A. Close to the water, the sea, or a river, when I am in a landscape that reminds me that we are one, then my problems and the noise in my head become smaller.

Q. Who are your biggest influences?
A. I find my roots in pop culture. Old cartoons and movies appear in my work without me even realizing it.  The other day I found myself rewatching the movie “Yellow Submarine” (one of my father’s favorite movies) and noticing how many connections of myself I could find in the imaginary world the movie had created.

Q. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
A. Love what you do.

Q. Which current art world trends are you following?
A. I really enjoy current artists’ aesthetics like James Jean and concepts of art activists like JR, I am interested in how they analyze nowadays issues through their own eyes and how their work impacts others. I also love to have a look at other artists like me on Instagram and how they develop their own storytelling.

Q. What can’t you live without?
A. Love & Music

Q. What is your dream project?
A. To collaborate with animators in a surreal music video for an artist I admire.

Q. What’s your favorite artwork of the collection?
A. I personally like La Petite Mort because it became the visual representation of a personal moment of change. When I started it I was in the middle of a big emotional hole and I stayed for a while in a loop just painting over and over the pink lines. 
As I started growing out of my personal situation I could also see the evolution of the painting, the changes in the face, and the flowers growing.

Q. What is currently on your playlist?
A. I love listening to Latin American music, especially Brazilian bossa, samba, and Peruvian cumbias. They really transport you into another world. I started my illustration career making posters in Bristol for the world music collective Worm Disco Club and making the merchandise for my own cumbia band Camo Clave, in both psychedelia and nature were very connected, so a big part of the inspiration for my colors and aesthetic comes from listening to these rhythms.

Q. What is your favorite piece of art?
A. This sounds like a cliche but I will always think of Hieronymous Bosh and his “The Garden of Earthly Delights”. I got in my hands one of his gallery books when I was very little and since then I was fascinated with the number of detailed characters that inhabit his pictures, I think of them as the TV of our era (now the internet), I imagine the rich families getting him to paint the most beautiful, twisted and fantastic stories of their times to entertain their days.

Q. What gives you life?
A. An amazing gig, playing music myself, running away from the city into new places, getting lost, and connecting with people. 

Q. What is your superpower?
A. Being stubborn is my superpower and my kryptonite. 

Q. What is your favorite thing in the world, and why? 
A. Finding inspiration, getting in the flow with things, and forgetting of the world around

Q. What ideas are you currently questioning?
A. How can the human race be so beautiful and twisted at the same time 

Q. Who is the one person, dead or alive, that you would like to have dinner with and why?
A. I would like to sit with my parents before they had me and ask them some questions about life.

Q. What’s next for you?
A. Dinner!

facebook.com/martazubieta
martazubieta.com
instagram.com/onirical_zubieta

1. Midnight Mass by Michelle Concetta

Brilliant surrealist collage artist Michelle Concetta contrasts classical imagery with contemporary photography in these evocative collages. This gorgeous and growing body of work is a brilliant addition to any cutting-edge collectors collection. Midnite Mass is just one of several mouth-watering prints available by this artist.

2. Manor House by Arabella Proffer

Proffer‘s Manor House is just one of a gorgeous collection of pop surrealistic artworks. Proffer “brings together my interests in botany, microbiology, space, disease, and the evolution of cells. I subconsciously explore the relationships between anatomy, biology, nature, and emerging sciences while creating from my own imagination.”

We love beautiful art and painting. And we’re just in awe of Proffer’s astounding imagery.

See more by pop-surrealist painter Arabella Proffer.

3. Bloom by Frank Moth.

4. Spore Collector by Eugenia Loli.

5. Elephant by Vincent Fink

Vincent Fink’s Iterations: In the pursuit to better redefine modern surrealism, I often find myself indulging in the vibrancy of color and concise composition with flaring elements of Sacred Geometry. The same level of intense detail is implored in all of my work but this series attempts to focus on the singularity and realism of the objects in my visions. I want to convey the world through another dimension: to see the hidden geometry that makes up everything in the universe:

6. Film Noir by Cassia Beck

7. Meteoric Rainfall by Picomodi

8. Pink Eruption by Filip Hodas

Pareidolic Apophenic Morphogenesis is the search to see things that only exist on the dark screen of the inner mind.
My works represent a journey from chaos, line and color into shape, form and content — freely growing from the mind’s inner eye onto the visual surface.
A world of fantastic landscapes, strange creatures and impossible machines and edifices that defy meaning, content and logic — yet are a true world unto themself.

About Jeff Engberg

Jeff Engberg endeavours with his artwork to find meaning in life by wandering through the dark recesses of the mind.
Engberg Studied art in California, Spain and Norway.
He is a member of the Norwegian Visual Artists Association (NBK Norsk Billedkunstnere) and the National Association of Drawers and Illustrators (Tegnerforbundet).
He has been associated with Can Serrat Art Center/Residency near Barcelona for 12 years and enjoys visiting and participating each summer. Can Serrat’s creative ambience and rural lifestyle in the Catalan countryside in the land of Dali, Miro and Tapies.

The Drawings

These last 8 years Jeff has focused on surrealistic drawings on cotton paper exploring dreamworlds and imaginative environments populated by strange creatures that strive to fulfill their calling in empty landscapes populated with strange animals and archetypical creatures.
Some say “no man is an island.” Jeff says “every man is an island unto himself”, deep within the confines of his mind and soul. Creative expression is how we humans try to express this isolation and share our inner soul with others.

http://www.jeffengberg.com/drawings/intro

Artist Statement

Matsumoto’s artwork reflects the morphological transformations of our ever-evolving ecological milieus that are attributed to a multitude of spatio-temporal phenomena influenced by socioeconomic and built environments. They are created as visual commentaries on speculative changes in notions of societies, cultures and ecosystems in the transient nature of shifting topography and geology.
The artwork explores the hybrid technique combining both traditional media (ink, acrylic, graphite, and photo collage) and digital media, manifesting the collective recognition of a multiplicity of epistemological viewpoints in all cognitive dimensions of spatiality.
The varying scale, juxtaposition of biomorphic forms, intertwined textures, oblique projections and visual metamorphoses are employed as the multi-layered drawing methodologies to question and investigate the ubiquitous nature of urban meta-morphology, the eco-political reality of the Anthropocene epoch, the advancement of biomaterial technologies and their visual representation in the context of non-Euclidean configuration. Furthermore, the application of these techniques allow the work to transcend the boundaries between analog and digital media as well as between two- and multi-dimensional domains.
His compositional techniques imbue the work with what we see as the very essence of our socio-cultural environments beyond the conventional protocols of architectural and artistic formalities, and that they conjure up the synthetic possibilities within which the spatial and temporal variations of existing spatial semiotics emerge as the potential products of alchemical procedures.

Biography

Ryota Matsumoto is a principal and founder of an award-winning interdisciplinary design office, Ryota Matsumoto Studio. He is an artist, designer and urban planner. Born in Tokyo, he was raised in Hong Kong and Japan. He received a Master of Architecture degree from University of Pennsylvania in 2007 after his studies at Architectural Association in London and Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art in early 90’s. Matsumoto has previously collaborated with a cofounder of the Metabolist Movement, Kisho Kurokawa, and with Arata Isozaki, Cesar Pelli, MIT Media Lab and Nihon Sekkei Inc. before establishing his office.
He presented his work for the 5th symposium of the Imaginaries of the Future at Cornell University in 2017 and currently serves as an adjunct lecturer of Transart institute, University of Plymouth.
His current interest gravitates around the embodiment of cultural possibilities in art, ecology, and urban topography.

http://www.ryotamatsumoto.com
https://www.facebook.com/ryota.matsumoto.718