MASTERPIECES recreated using an artist’s beloved cat which have become an internet sensation are having their first UK unveiling this weekend in Abingdon.

Russian artist Svetlana Petrova is exhibiting her show Russian Extremes – from Icons to Icats at Stonehill Barn, Drayton.

Oxford Mail:

Svetlana Petrova.

Gallery owner Anthea Norman-Taylor has known the multi-media artist for more than 10 years and invited her to exhibit.

Ms Petrova began her feline project in 2011 as a way of fulfilling her mother’s dying wish to look after Zarathustra the cat.

She told the Oxford Mail: “She told me to look after her kitten and I thought this is the best way I could take care of it – by making it famous.”

Her website, Fat Cat Art, described itself as “famous paintings improved by cats”.

Oxford Mail:

Diego Velazquez’s Venus At Her Mirror.

By digitally infusing the animal into paintings by Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci, Zarathustra shot to fame on the web.

Oxford Mail:

A recreation of Diego Velazquez’s Venus At Her Mirror created by Svetlana Petrova.

She said: “This is a new kind of art – internet art – and it gives way to new interpretations of the paintings.”

The show will include six paintings that have not been online.

The exhibition begins tomorrow and runs until June 5.

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