Celebrating the parallels between the World Cup wins by Argentinians Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona, artist Mats Drawing has produced a stunning work that places iconic images of the two athletes on the jerseys that their respective team wore at the time.
Mats Drawing operates in a nice little niche space, customising shirts and accentuating them through the addition of artistic works, as we saw when he used last season’s AC Milan x Nemen 4th shirt as his canvas, filling in the literal blanks to instantly elevate the overall design. Now, he’s finished his latest passion project, with the unveiling of ‘Messi x Maradona’ – a framed piece that combines the adidas 2022 Argentina world cup shirt, emblazoned with the image of Messi lifting the World Cup set alongside the Le Coq Sportif produced Argentina World Cup shirt from 1986, likewise boasting an image of Maradona holding the trophy aloft.
Measuring in at 162x97cm, the finished project was unveiled with the caption: “Weeks and weeks of work to find the right jersey, the right canvas, the right frame, the right decorative elements, to do the 2 paintings… which makes it my biggest project to date!”
Messi’s World Cup win has inspired plenty of creative output from artists and designers the world over, and this one-of-one piece arrives as one of the finest.
Large format posters of the two jerseys are available at matsdrawing.fr
Check out more of Mats work here.
