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Famous American artist Nathan Sawaya's exhibition ‘The Art of the Brick,’ showcasing sculptures made entirely of Lego bricks, opened in Paris Thursday. Pieces on display included a dinosaur skeleton, a wind-blown red dress, and replicates of pieces such as the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.

A former lawyer, Nathan Sawaya quit his job in a New York law firm in the early 2000's to follow his passion—Lego art. He first introduced Lego sculptures to the art world in 2007 and has since staged exhibitions in North America, Asia, Australia and Europe.

"I think the great think about Lego bricks is a universal toy. I've taken the exhibition around the globe. I've taken Lego bricks to places where people have never heard of Lego," Sawaya said.

"I mean, when I was in Africa I met some folks who'd never played with Lego and never even heard of it. And yet they immediately got it when I brought out a few bricks. And that's the great thing about using the medium: it makes the art very accessible." 

At the center of the exhibit is Sawaya's 'Yellow'—his most famous piece made from more than 11,000 yellow bricks and a six-meter-long skeleton of a dinosaur made from more than 80,000 bricks. Sawaya explained the challenges behind these works.

"It's just gigantic from a scale of building with Lego bricks. It took an entire summer for me to complete and there was a lot of challenges from and engineering standpoint. There's another piece in here, a red dress, where it's flowing in the wind. That was a real challenge because to get these little rectangles to look like there were blowing in the wind really took a lot of work," he said.

Sawaya has also been inspired by masterpieces from art history, such as 'The Thinker' by French sculptor Auguste Rodin, 'The Scream' by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch and 'Mona Lisa' by Italian artist and engineer Leonardo da Vinci.

The exhibition includes more than 100 art sculptures made from more than one million Lego plastic bricks. It has previously visited London, New York, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Shanghai and Singapore.