Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Bernard Madoff, the financier who is serving a 150-year prison sentence for running a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, flashes a big smile.

Madoff sits on the back wall of what was once a milk-truck depot. His wax portrait, recreated from a Wall Street Journal image, is given pride of place inside London’s Riflemaker Dairy gallery.

The wax Madoff is the latest in a series by the Spanish pop-star-turned-artist Jose-Maria Cano, “The Wall Street 100.” Cano makes wall-sized wax-and-paraffin paintings based on the Wall Street Journal’s dotty black-and-white head shots. They’re his sarcastic take on how finance overtook all else. Madoff epitomizes the phenomenon.

“He’s very special: the incarnation of this financial world,” says Cano, dressed in army pants and a padded bomber jacket inside the chilly ex-depot. “Madoff is the prophet.”

Cano, 50, started the Madoff work on the day that stories first appeared on the scandal, and now considers it “the best one by far.” Though his gallery has had undisclosed offers from interested buyers, “I would prefer not to sell Bernard Madoff,” he says. “I love that painting.”

Before taking up art full time a decade ago, Cano was a pop star, co-founder with his brother Nacho of the band Mecano, which sold 25 million records in the 1980s and 1990s.

Then Cano became entangled in a bitter divorce, and found that his son had Asperger Syndrome, a condition he knew nothing about. Going on a global tour with the band suddenly seemed futile, and he left it in 1998.

Divorce Paintings

He decided to make art out of the streams of letters he received from his wife’s divorce lawyer, and turned more than 100 of them into wax paintings that he hung in his home. The works were spotted, and shown at the same time as Art Basel Miami in 2004. His artistic career took off.

Today, the walls of Riflemaker Dairy are covered with large wax likenesses: Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, a bit chubby around the jowls; Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, looking cheery; Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, flashing a toothy smile; and News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, his bow- tie slightly askew.

Cano has a home in Holland Park, bought when he moved to London in 1993 from Paul Berrow, manager of the rock band Duran Duran. Last month, his wax portrait of Queen Elizabeth II sold at Sotheby’s for 61,250 pounds ($102,503). So why is he so critical of high finance?

Shifting Billions

The artist has a problem with those who get rich speculating. In his view, they “do nothing” besides shifting money at their computer, and are “creating billions -- from where? From what?”

“When things get out of proportion,” Cano cautions, “they create tension, and then a cracking point.”

Cano’s true passion is drawing, he says. He took drawing lessons every day after school from the age of 9 to 17. He hoped to become an architect.

Much as he enjoys living in London, he remembers feeling alienated by the surfeit of bankers in the city -- until the financial meltdown brought on by the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

“The normal people were hidden: It was, like, red Ferraris all around the place,” he says. “London is much more interesting since the crisis.”

To contact the writer on this story: Farah Nayeri in London at Farahn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 9, 2009 19:00 EST