[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2281972946.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tLionel Messi, the Argentine superhero of soccer who is the highest-scoring player in World Cup history as of last week, has been monumentalized in a remote town in Patagonia. The stats: 85 feet tall, 70 tons in weight, and $130,000 to fabricate.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs reported by the New York Times<\/em>, the statue by artist Aldo Beroisa follows from other creations of his including statues of dinosaurs and Jesus, and has been in the works for more than a year. \u201cThis is going to be our Sistine Chapel,\u201d said the mayor of Cutral C\u00f3, a town in the Patagonian desert that commissioned the work. \u201cYou can manage to convey what Christ looked like, or in the Last Supper\u2014what the apostles looked like is open to interpretation. But with this one, you can\u2019t make a mistake. Messi is Messi.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBeroisa committed to the cause, amid some serious obstacles. As the Times<\/em> described, \u201cHe has defied the relentless Patagonian winds that pulverized Messi\u2019s beard, Earth\u2019s gravity that once snapped the player\u2019s arm, and nearly broke his own neck to give his country\u2019s soccer legend a larger-than-life tribute.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAnd he paid special attention to Messi\u2019s face, recognizable all across the globe. \u201cAll the public opinion\u2019s eyes are going to be on the face,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I don\u2019t get the face right, everything I built falls apart.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNow, Beroisa\u2019s work counts as the largest statue of its kind. (Another enormous one was recently removed in Kolkata, India, over safety concerns\u2014but, in any case, Beroisa made his 15 feet taller, so his stands to be the victor for a long time to come.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/lionel-messi-statue-argentina-1234790710\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-2281972946.jpg?w=1024″] Lionel Messi, the Argentine superhero of soccer who is the highest-scoring player in World Cup history as of last week, has been monumentalized in a remote town in Patagonia. The stats: 85 feet tall, 70 tons in weight, and $130,000 to fabricate. As reported by the New York Times, the statue by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-2017716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2017716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2017716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2017716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2017716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2017716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}