Eager to avoid the life of a starving artist after finishing his studies at New York’s School of Visual Arts in 1977, Charles Fazzino got some straightforward advice from his father Salvatore, a shoe designer.
“He said to me, ‘If you’re going to be an artist and you want to be successful, buddy, you better do something that’s different,’” Fazzino said. “I took that to heart.”
His special niche, he eventually discovered with an assist from his mother, was three-dimensional pop art – vibrant, colorful, often playful concepts that use layers, fragments and assorted doodads to infuse his works with unexpected breadth and depth. His multi-strata technique results in ostensibly tactile, seemingly kinetic depictions of his subjects, which most often are contemporary personalities, events and urban settings.
While his subjects include numerous pop culture icons (Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Disney characters), Fazzino is perhaps best known for his work that features sports teams and events. He is the National Football League’s official artist for Super Bowl LX, to be played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, 40 miles south of San Francisco on 8 February 2026. It will be the 26th season he has served in that role for the NFL.
In addition, Fazzino has been the official artist for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game for more than 20 years. He’s served a similar role for the Olympic Games, two Fifa World Cup tournaments, five Daytime Emmy Award ceremonies and the Grammy Awards. He is also the official artist for America’s semiquincentennial (ie, 250th birthday in July). He is widely regarded as one of the world’s most prominent creators of pop art.
His many collectors range from baseball’s Bernie Williams and Mariano Rivera to football’s Peyton and Eli Manning, from Tom Brady’s father to multiple entertainment celebrities. (Pre-presidential Donald Trump, Fazzino notes, was one of his earliest celebrity collectors.) “I’ve never met Madonna, but I know she owns some of my artwork,” he said. He was asked to create a piece to commemorate the September wedding of Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco.
His artwork is on display in the John F Kennedy international airport (a glittery model plane with a 12ft wingspan inside a glass case in the American Airlines terminal, plus a 25ft mural that rises above the escalator leading to the baggage claim), and he was commissioned to create works for the White House Historical Association and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum’s 25th anniversary commemoration. His art has been sold in 35 countries. His website claims it can be found on 250 cruise ships worldwide.
Not bad for a kid born in the Bronx and raised in Pelham Manor, New York – still his home today, about a 25-minute train ride north of New York City.
“It’s super satisfying,” said Fazzino, who turned 70 the day after Christmas. “I knew I was on to something because it looks so different from regular artwork. It’s fun, it’s exciting. People tell me it makes them feel good when they look at it.”
Fazzino’s parents were collectors of popout books. “I was enthralled with them,” said Fazzino. He developed one of his own, about a cat, though he was unsuccessful in getting it published.
In 1982, as he struggled to find work, his Finnish-born mother, Irene, a sculptor, encouraged him to gather some of his work and join her at an art show in New York’s Greenwich Village. Along with other pieces, he tore several pages out of his never-published popout book, framed them and brought them to the show. Just to see what people might think.
“On the first day I sold all of them,” he said. “Nobody bought any of my flat artwork, but they bought all these cool 3D pieces that were in Plexiglass boxes. I knew from that minute on that I was on to a new form of art. People loved it because it’s whimsical and colorful and exciting. They can see the amount of work involved in it. That’s how it all started.”
Fazzino’s 3D technique, layering piece upon piece upon piece, is a complex process.
“In any piece that I do, there are endless hours of cutting and gluing,” he said. “When I first started, I had more time than anything to just sit there and work on the details. I cut two or three layers of prints, glued them together and then used a special type of silicone to make them three-dimensional. When you stand back and you look at it, it actually looks like it’s floating or that it has sides to it. It almost looks sculptural in a way.
“My wife, before she was my wife, was cutting pieces for me, and I was up at night gluing them in place. The pieces were getting so involved. I thought, ‘How am I going to keep this up and do all of this?’ I just kept with it.”
Today Fazzino employs dozens of apprentice artists (six full-time) to cut, glue and assemble the components of his designs – works that can include up to 3,000 individual pieces. “They’re still cut by hand,” Fazzino said. “We collectively create these pieces. Having a large team allows me to concentrate on individual artwork for a collector or an event.”
Much of what Fazzino creates is known as a serigraph, a silk-screened fine art print. But he also works in unconventional 3D media – elaborately adorned baseball bats, baseballs, batting helmets or football helmets, tricked out with an abundance of textures and add-ons, often Swarovski crystals (a favorite of Fazzino’s), all to achieve an almost outlandish degree of visual dazzle.
“To commemorate Super Bowls, the NFL sent me a box of old, used equipment,” he recalled.
“They said, ‘OK, Charles, what can you do with these?’ It took me several years to perfect the technique and find the right paints and paper to translate my 3D paintings on to these shapes. Then I wanted to make them look glossy like a real football helmet. I tried various glazes at my studio, but they weren’t shiny enough. One day, I thought of Maaco.”
Seriously, Maaco, the auto body shop. “I took these finished helmets and asked if they could spray them with car glaze. After they did a couple of coats and they dried, they looked like glass. They looked incredible. They made the paper glued to the helmets feel hard. It looked like a sculpture. Then I started embellishing them with Swarovski crystals, and we had this piece that told Super Bowl history in a bold, unique way.” His original works can fetch up to $100,000 or more, according to Fazzino’s business manager, Julie Maner.
For the official poster for Super Bowl LX, Fazzino’s design will showcase Levi’s Stadium, its surroundings, its connection to the Bay Area and as many depictions of famous regional landmarks as he can squeeze in. The league has also asked him to create a poster that showcases the logos of all 60 Super Bowls. He’ll make an appearance with his Super Bowl art collection before the game at the NFL Shop at San Francisco’s Moscone Center. Former 49er Frank Gore will help Fazzino unveil his art at ZK Gallery on Fisherman’s Wharf on 3 February. The gallery will host a meet-and-greet event for Fazzino two days later.
Part of a shortlist of major pop artists (Peter Max, LeRoy Neiman) who have documented Super Bowls, Fazzino, who favors the term “pop culture historian” to describe his craft, aims to weave a common thread through his big-game artwork.
“I want people to remember the experience, to make it feel like you’re almost there,” he said. “I’ll have San Francisco in the background with the mountains and the skyline and the whole stadium full of people. There’s confetti and a sense of excitement that includes a football flying out of the stadium. For so many fans, this is their life, and they love their teams. I want them to feel the emotion of that in my artwork.
“The NFL knows my work is whimsical and fun, but they also want it to be authentic and geographically correct. So when stadiums are not exactly in the city, I use artistic license and stretch the truth a little. Still, I want to make it so when people look at the artwork, they remember the moment, whether it was on television or if they actually experienced it in person.”
Leo Kane, retired senior vice-president of consumer products for the NFL, enthusiastically added Fazzino’s art to its Super Bowl package for the 2001 game (SB XXXV) in Tampa Bay. He calls Fazzino “a special guy”.
“His work is very visually compelling,” Kane said. “He understands what the local people cherish and value. His art is no different than a classic song. He creates classic pop art. His magic is he just gets what people are looking for.
“When I was still with the league, we talked about the NFL being like the last great campfire, where people of all different walks of life can have a bond over their NFL team. And when you look at Charles’s work, he gets that. He understands the connection that’s there.”
Despite his exhibitions at hundreds of galleries, he concedes he hopes to be recognized as a serious artist.
“I don’t like the word ‘commercial’, but I have to call myself a commercial artist because I am doing things that are commercially successful,” he said. “But now at my age, I’m trying to get more museum exhibits because I’m more concerned with my legacy.” He says he has gallery exhibitions lined up later this year in Germany and another at the Elliott Museum in Stuart, Florida.
But for the moment, his focus is on football. “Being involved with the Super Bowl for 26 years is just an honor, as well as all of these other events and involvement with celebrities,” he said. “Considering how all this started, it’s kind of crazy when I think about it.”