Visionary and boundary-pushing. We are talking about Felipe Pantone, the Argentine-Spanish artist who has electrified the Zeitgeist with his work: frescoes, murals, paintings, and sculptures that lend a tactile weight to the digital world. His pieces speak to contemporary themes through vivid colours, geometric patterns, and bold contrasts that push the limits of movement and perspective.

The artist’s ultimate goal is to “make art freely, using the tools that work best,” as he notes himself, whether that means exhibiting in galleries worldwide, turning a 1994 Chevrolet Corvette into something futuristic, or painting Portugal’s largest mural. Now, courtesy of Etnia Barcelona, his craft hits the eyewear space. The Spanish brand, known for pushing creative limits into the unknown, has teamed up with the artist to create a numbered, limited-edition run of 1,000 pieces dropping in October.

The Etnia Barcelona X Felipe Pantone Ltd Edition stems from a shared vision: seeing design as something alive and constantly evolving, a vehicle through which creativity, colour, and experimentation unlock new modes of expression. The sunglasses model features an interchangeable temple system offering two distinct designs developed by the Etnia Barcelona and Pantone design teams. The first boasts chromatic gradients along the temples inspired by the artist’s digital energy and signature colour palette. Achieving these gradients required a complex lamination and combination process involving multi-coloured acetates, creating a unique shift in hue that reflects Pantone’s distinctive visual language. The second option features an optical motif inspired by his signature moiré effect, one of the most recognizable visual elements in the artist’s work. Depending on the viewing angle, it creates a sense of movement, vibration, and visual depth.

Originally published in Eyebook 38