Heye - People: Marilyn II 1000 Piece Jigsaw Puzzle

Marilyn Monroe painted in slashing wet strokes, with the paint allowed to run down the canvas. By the Austrian painter Voka, and it is one of the few genuinely painterly things in the range.

What you are looking at

The face fills almost the whole frame, turned slightly, lips parted. It is recognisably her and it is built from colour that has nothing to do with skin: streaks of turquoise and cobalt across the eyelids and cheek, acid green on the temple, ochre and burnt orange down one side of the jaw, magenta in the shadows. The lips are the only conventionally rendered thing in the picture, a hard scarlet.

The hair is laid on in thick white and cream strokes with the brush marks left visible and the canvas showing through in places. Behind, a ground of crimson and hot pink, scraped and layered. Long drips of white and grey run vertically down the lower half where the paint was allowed to fall. Two small pearl earrings, and the artist's signature bottom right.

What it is like to build

Forget colour sorting. This picture is about direction. Every stroke was laid with a loaded brush in a specific direction, and at piece scale that direction is far more informative than the hue, because the same turquoise appears on the eyelid, the jaw and the background.

Build the lips and the eyes first. They are the only areas with conventional drawing and they fix the centre. Then the hair, sorting by stroke angle: it radiates outward, so a piece tells you roughly where on the head it belongs. The drips are unexpectedly useful, since they all run vertically and only occur in the lower half. The crimson background is the last job.

Why Heye

Heye are German and their catalogue is built on licensing living artists rather than stock photography, which is why it looks unlike everybody else's. Voka's technique, which he calls spontaneous realism, is exactly the sort of thing that only reproduces well with a good print. Board and cut to the German standard.

Specifications

A little context

Expressionist portraiture is one of the harder things to puzzle and one of the most satisfying to finish, because the finished piece genuinely reads as a painting rather than a reproduction. If you want the same artist family at half the commitment, we also hold Frida II at 500 pieces. Derived from multiple public data sources across retail, search and community platforms, refreshed 31 August 2026.

Stock is real and it is in Sydney. Free shipping Australia wide over $150, and free same-day delivery inside 6 km of North Bondi with no minimum.

Built it already? Use the Questions section below and tell us how you found it. Which part fought you, how long it took, and whether you would send someone else to it. We answer every one.