Top 10 Famous Paintings Reimagined on the Street

Famous paintings do not stay still when the street gets hold of them. They climb stairs, take over street signs and borrow whole buildings.

This fixed editorial countdown ranks ten reimaginings by how inventively they transform the source painting and how completely they use the public setting. Likes remain open, but they do not change the 10-to-1 order.

More: Famous Paintings (17 Photos)

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10. 🕊️ Camouflage — By Pejac in Rijeka, Croatia 🇭🇷

Pejac officially calls this work Camouflage (Tribute to René Magritte). Created in 2016 on the windows of an abandoned power plant at Ružićeva ulica 32 in Rijeka, it turns the negative space of shattered panes into a flock of birds above the painted boy and slingshot. Instead of copying one Magritte canvas, Pejac makes the building, glass and sky perform the illusion. It opens the countdown because the reference is indirect, but the site-specific transformation is unmistakable.

💡 Nerd Fact: The power plant formed part of Hartera, Rijeka’s former paper-mill complex. The University of Rijeka records that the mill installed a steam engine in 1833, the first of its kind in that part of Europe.

More: By Pejac in Croatia, Rijeka – Tribute to René Magritte

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9. 🍏 The Son of Man Bollard — By Oakoak in Nantes, France 🇫🇷

Documented in Nantes, the intervention compresses Magritte’s The Son of Man into one traffic bollard: a bowler hat, dark suit and apple-covered face. Oakoak keeps the visual quotation tiny and lets the bollard itself supply the body. The result feels as if Magritte’s anonymous gentleman has quietly joined the pavement.

More: Magritte – By Oakoak in France

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8. 😱 The Scream Crossing — By Monotremu in Timișoara, Romania 🇷🇴

Contemporary documentation from May 2011 identifies this intervention as Der Schrei in Timișoara, with the photographs credited to Monotremu. The artistic duo needs only one traffic sign to make Edvard Munch’s anguished figure commute with everyone else. The familiar crossing symbol becomes a miniature public panic, and the joke works in a single glance. Few adaptations move a museum icon into everyday city life so efficiently.

💡 Nerd Fact: MUNCH’s collection contains eight finished versions of The Scream: one painting, one drawing and six lithographs. The museum rotates a painting, drawing and print in its collection display, showing only one at a time. Every version was made on paper or cardboard, materials that are particularly vulnerable to light.

More: Clever Repaints (9 Photos)

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7. 🎮 The Girl With the Pixel Earring — By Amanda Measday with Jack Fran in Adelaide, Australia 🇦🇺

In an official 2016 post, Amanda Measday titled the mural The Girl With the Pixel Earring, placed it in Adelaide and credited Jack Fran. In her project note, Measday explains that her interest in repeated grids and the basic digital pixel led her to choose Vermeer’s instantly recognizable portrait; Fran helped execute the design. The pose, gaze and blue-and-gold palette remain readable while the visible grid turns the soft seventeenth-century image into a crisp digital mosaic.

More: The Girl With the Pixel Earring

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6. 🕯️ Saint Sebastian Tended by Saint Irene — By Andrea Ravo Mattoni at Ospedale di Circolo in Varese, Italy 🇮🇹

Painted in 2021 for the hospital’s CurArti project, Andrea Ravo Mattoni’s spray-painted enlargement of Georges de La Tour’s candlelit scene wraps around two exterior faces of the cooling tower at the Via Guicciardini entrance to Ospedale di Circolo. The lantern at the corner creates a three-dimensional effect, and the commission explicitly honored healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hospital setting deepens rather than merely frames the original scene of care.

More: Georges de la Tour: “S. Sebastiano” – Mural by Andrea Ravo Mattoni

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5. 🌫️ Der Wanderer 4.0 — By Innerfields in Cologne, Germany 🇩🇪

Created in 2019 for Walls of Vision following a school project with pupils from Kaiserin-Theophanu-Schule, Der Wanderer 4.0 transfers Caspar David Friedrich’s back-turned figure to Gießener Straße in Cologne-Kalk. Innerfields replaces the sublime mountain fog with a dystopian near-future Cologne: power-station plumes, a flood wave, capsizing ships and a selfie-taking wanderer. The original invitation to look through the figure’s eyes becomes a warning about climate crisis and passive spectatorship.

💡 Nerd Fact: Friedrich’s original landscape does not reproduce one real viewpoint. The Hamburger Kunsthalle traces its foreground rock to an 1813 drawing near Kaiserkrone, the left peak to an 1808 study of Rosenberg and the middle-ground formation to a drawing of the Gamrig.

More: Wanderer – By Innerfields in Cologne, Germany (5 Photos)

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4. 🥛 The Milkmaid — By Carlos Mascaró in Ciutadella, Menorca, Spain 🇪🇸

Carlos Mascaró created this intervention for Street Art Ciutadella in 2015 on Carrer del Roser. Mascaró places Vermeer’s kitchen scene inside a painted frame, then lets the milk spill down the wall to two waiting cats. A later Menorca account records the spilling milk and cats and notes that the reinterpretation caught the attention of Rijksmuseum curator Pieter Roelofs. Because the festival treated its installations as temporary and later reused the wall for another Mascaró work, The Milkmaid is no longer at the site. The wall and pavement supply both the scale and the punchline.

More: Street Art Based on The Milkmaid in Ciutadella, Menorca, Spain

🔗 Visit Carlos Mascaró’s website

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3. 🐈 SANTA ÁGUEDA — By Albert Bonet in Riba-roja d’Ebre, Spain 🇪🇸

Bonet posted the 2023 mural as SANTA ÁGUEDA. Local reporting gives the Catalan title Santa Agda and confirms that Riba-roja d’Ebre’s town council commissioned it for the parking façade at Plaça del Mercat. The mural reworks the reclining pose of Goya’s La Maja Desnuda with actress Asia Ortega’s face and pop details including Hello Kitty. Painted in Bonet’s hometown, the patron-saint dedication turns a museum image into something unmistakably local.

💡 Nerd Fact: The familiar titles of Goya’s paired paintings were not used in their earliest known inventory. The Prado records that in 1813 the nude and clothed works were listed simply as “Gypsies.”

More: 6 New Discoveries: Exploring the Latest Gems of the Street Art World

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2. ⛪ El Descendimiento — By J.M. Brea at Plasencia Cathedral in Plasencia, Spain 🇪🇸

In his own detailed account of the work, J.M. Brea calls it El Descendimiento and explains that Caravaggio’s The Entombment of Christ provided the starting composition rather than an image to copy. Brea developed a personal version, using his brother as the model for Christ’s body and his father’s hands while also drawing on Velázquez and Zurbarán. Painted in fifteen sections on an 11-by-6-metre wooden structure, the temporary work was assembled 26 metres above the unfinished join between the Old and New Cathedrals at Plaza de la Catedral as the official image for Plasencia’s Holy Week in 2025. Removed after summer 2025, it was stored for restoration ahead of a planned permanent installation inside the cathedral. Its diagonal composition and close fit with the architecture make the photographed work feel almost sculptural.

More: New Street Art #3 (21 Photos)

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1. 💛 Kiss — By Zag & Sia at the Arsenal in Metz, France 🇫🇷

Zag & Sia posted the July 2018 work as Kiss; the official Constellations de Metz programme listed it as Le Baiser, after Gustav Klimt, on the steps of the Arsenal at 3 Avenue Ney. The duo split Klimt’s golden embrace across dozens of stair risers. From the intended viewpoint, the fragments lock together and the couple reappears; move to the side and the image dissolves into color. It takes first place because viewers must find the right position to make the painting whole.

More: The Kiss – By Zag & Sia in Metz, France

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Which one is your favorite?