“Dreams are built… one brick at a time!” (Nathan Sawaya)

Welcome to the incredible art of LEGO ® by Nathan Sawaya!

You dreamed about it.

Nathan Sawaya did it!

This exhibition is for everyone.

The Art of the Brick immerses the visitor in Nathan Sawaya’s world, a world as cheerful and colorful as it is unsettling.

The artist used more than one million bricks for this exhibit alone, creating artworks that bring a smile to the face or inspire reflection among young and old.

The exhibition offers the visitor a variety of sculptures: from Rodin’s Thinker and the Chartres Cathedral’s north rose window, to a dinosaur skeleton measuring 20 feet long constructed with 80,020 LEGO bricks.

Wait no longer!

The Art of the Brick has been proclaimed by CNN as one of the world’s 10 must-see exhibitions and has already attracted millions of visitors worldwide in New York, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Shanghai and Singapore.

For the young and the not so young, situated somewhere between modernity and vintage, the LEGO brick never goes out of style and is not affected by the crisis.

A single object that intrinsically contains infinite possibilities through its multiplicity, it inspires or reawakens an irrepressible desire to play, invent and dream in anyone who picks one up!

What’s more difficult to resist than the attraction of the colors and shapes of a pile of LEGO bricks we find in our way?

The Art of The Brick fuels the public’s obsession for the little brick by placing creativity and playfulness at the core of the exhibition.

It starts with the artist’s creativity, but it calls on the visitor’s creativity too.

The works on show are only examples and a tiny part of what the visitor can do with LEGO bricks!

If the beauty of the artworks presented at The Art of The Brick attracts the public, it’s above all their great creative potential that fascinates both young and old.

Born in Colville, Washington State, Nathan Sawaya grew up in Veneta, Oregon.

A happy, creative child, Nathan loved to draw, write stories, do magic tricks, and of course… remake the world with LEGO® bricks.

His law studies when he was a young adult put an end to a life of imagination and creativity and set him on a career as a New York lawyer.

But leopards don’t change their spots!

After several years of living life at high speed, Nathan Sawaya decided to give up everything and return to his first loves: play, imagination and creativity!

The artist, frustrated for too long, suddenly left the negotiation of contracts behind him and devoted his time to building figures with LEGO bricks, one of his first loves.

Today Nathan Sawaya has more than 4 million colored bricks in his studios in New York and Los Angeles and exhibits his creations worldwide.

Sawaya has been featured on multiple media outlets including The Colbert Report, where he presented Stephen Colbert with a life size replica of… Stephen Colbert, CBS’s the Late Show with David Letterman, NBC’s Today Show, TBS’s Conan, ABC’S Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Hollywood Reporter, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal.

Nathan Sawaya did not choose his materials by chance.

Like many children, his history with LEGO started when he was very young.

But unlike most of us, he never forgot the famous bricks!

Nathan Sawaya was 5 when he received his first box of LEGO bricks for Christmas.

Encouraged by his parents and grandparents, who were aware of the child’s creativity, Nathan immediately got to work and started on a series of equally fantastic houses, cars, or animals.

A few years later, with just as much passion, he began building a whole town, covering more than 107 square feet!

When he was 10 and his parents refused to adopt a pet, Nathan Sawaya decided to make his own: he built a life-size dog with LEGO bricks.

It was then that he realized that LEGO bricks could become absolutely anything he wanted, and not just follow the picture on the box.

When he traded his office chair for the floor of a studio in the beginning of 2000, Nathan Sawaya reawakened the child and artist within himself.

Since the two are inseparable as far as he is concerned, this also led to a creative process based on play, which many consider to be a revolution in the field of the arts.”(Publicity blurb)

Zürich, 29 December 2015:

The Art of the Brick had been in Zürich since 25 September and would travel on to other locales after 10 January.

Ute, my wife, had already seen it and recommended that I see it too.

The exhibition needed time and determination to locate it, to find it.

Puls 5 was a tram ride and a long walk of uncertainty.

And it wasn´t cheap, at least by my wallet´s standards.

And the grumpy old man in me was thinking:

Just how interesting can art made out of LEGO bricks possibly be?

“Lego  is a line of plastic construction toys that are manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark.

The Lego Group’s motto is det bedste er ikke for godt, which means roughly “only the best is the best” (or “the best is never too good”).

The company’s flagship product, Lego, consists of colorful interlocking plastic bricks accompanying an array of gears, figurines called minifigures and various other parts.

Lego pieces can be assembled and connected in many ways, to construct objects such as vehicles, buildings, and working robots.

Anything constructed can then be taken apart again and the pieces used to make other objects.

The Lego Group began manufacturing the interlocking toy bricks in 1949.

Since then a global Lego subculture has developed.

Supporting movies, games, competitions and six Legoland amusement parks have been developed under the brand.

As of July 2015, 600 billion Lego parts had been produced.

In February 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as Brand Finance‘s “world’s most powerful brand”.

Lego is derived from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means “play well”. (Wikipedia)

The small exhibition was packed.

People were lining up around the block.

I found myself taking picture after picture after picture, amazed at the artist´s ability to mimic other artworks and the world itself.

And, oh, the things you´ll see!

…a giant Swiss watch, a violin, a computer with mouse, a giant pencil, chess pieces, the planet Earth, the amazing Pencilhead Man, a treble clef, Andy Warhol, peace in our time, Michelangelo´s David, Munch´s Scream…

…and much much more.

Lost your childhood?

Regain it with Nathan Sawaya´s help.

When his travelling toy show comes to your town, pop in and smile at how “the child within the man” made a man a messenger of popular culture.

Art is all around us.

Let Nathan teach you how to play well.