Artist creates 'Latin American Mona Lisa' with plastic bottle caps

San Salvador: A massive mural made of plastic bottle caps depicts Latin America s version of the famed Mona Lisa, adorning a modest apartment building...

San Salvador: A massive mural made of plastic bottle caps depicts Latin America's version of the famed Mona Lisa, adorning a modest apartment building in a working class neighborhood outside the capital of El Salvador instead of the walls of the Louvre.

Using a rainbow of colors and various sizes of caps, Venezuelan artist Oscar Olivares's latest installation is 13 meters (about 43 feet) tall and takes inspiration from Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci as well as the pointillist paintings of French artist Paul Signac.

"I wanted to portray a Latin American Mona Lisa," Olivares told AFP.

The mural is in Zacamil, in the Mejicanos suburb of San Salvador --

"The Mona Lisa is an ordinary woman, and she's an icon of the Italian Renaissance" -- and now "we are living through a new Renaissance, both in El Salvador and the world," Olivares said.Venezuelan artist Oscar Olivares poses in front of his mural made with plastic bottle caps on an apartment building in the Zacamil neighborhood in Mejicanos, El salvador, on February 20, 2026.. (Photo by Marvin Recinos / AFP)