Saudi Arabia commissioned Domingo Zapata to paint what’s being called the largest mural ever created—at a size, as the New York Post’s “Page Six” put it, of 540,000 square feet, or about nine football fields.
The New York–based Zapata—who the Post notes “has painted stars including Kim Kardashian and Sofia Vergara, and painted with the last pope”—said he has been given “a blank check” to create a work with a team of some 100 collaborating artists over the course of four to six years.
Zapata called his future work “the Middle Eastern version of the Sistine Chapel” and as reported by Artnet News, said, “As an artist, having the freedom to create without boundaries is incredibly rare. That’s why I reference the Sistine Chapel—not to compare myself to Michelangelo, but to evoke that moment in history when an artist was entrusted with complete creative freedom to interpret humanity as it was understood at the time.”
He continued: “The opportunity to contribute to a project of this scale, and to create something that may endure beyond our time, is what truly excites me. It’s the chance to build without limits, and to aim for something timeless.”
According to Artnet, the commission came from Jerry Inzerillo, the CEO of Diriyah Gate Development Authority, and is supported by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. The artwork will be part of a $63 billion Diriyah cultural zone in the capital city of Riyadh.
“They’re building this huge avenue, similar to the Champs-Élysées, that will go into this main square where different universities and technology centers are gonna be, and research centers are gonna be,” said Zapata. “And the park, basically, is gonna be the mural. The mural is in a form of hieroglyph, kind of like an Egyptian story. And it’s gonna talk about the history of art, basically, and tradition and heritage of the Saudi kingdom.”
Artnews called Zapata “a famous artist who no one in the art world had ever heard of” in 2016. Among his credits are large-scale mural works for Wynwood Malls in Miami and a building in New York’s Times Square, as well as connections to Leonardo DiCaprio, George Soros, Lindsay Lohan, Scarlett Johansson, and Kim Kardashian.
