After seeing Polaroids of “Modern Family” vixen Sofia Vergara clad in nothing but the tiniest of black thongs, a push-up bra and bright paint courtesy of artist Domingo Zapata, who used the actress’ famed curves as a canvas one hot August night, Eva Longoria begged Zapata to paint her, too.
“I met [Longoria] last week at dinner with Carmelo [Anthony] and La La and everybody. And she’s like, ‘I want you to do to me what you did to Sofia!’ And I said, ‘Of course, let’s do it.’ ”
PHOTOS: ZAPATA’S WORK & INSPIRATION
The Desperate Housewife will be the next sexy starlet in Zapata’s project “Ten,” a series of portraits of “iconic” females that have so far included Pamela Anderson, Kim Kardashian, Angelina Jolie, Lady Gaga, Michelle Rodriguez, Ana Beatriz Barros and Lindsay Lohan.
“It’s a really cool concept because a lot of the women are naked in the pictures, but you can only see that if you take the paint off, which would devalue the whole thing,” explains Philip Rebeiz-Nielsen of Hus Gallery in London, which reps Zapata.
Lohan was depicted as biblical Eve in a four-photo, paint-splattered tribute that sold for $100,000. After Longoria, Scarlett Johansson is slated to be immortalized.
“Do I look like a guy that anybody would turn down?” jokes the shaggy and affable artist, clad in jeans, suspenders and a black T-shirt on Friday in his two-bedroom home/studio in the Bowery Hotel.
Our guess is, probably not.
In the past few months, 38-year-old Zapata — one of approximately 200 living artists whose work sells for upwards of six figures — has become nearly as well-known for his celeb posse and Page Six mentions of love liaisons and vandalized artwork as he has for his colorful paintings of everything from Marilyn Monroe to circus elephants.
The Spanish-born painter counts Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp and Jason Segel as clients and friends. Carmelo Anthony and Tommy Hilfiger dueled over ownership rights of a Superman painting by Zapata. (He’s going to paint Hilfiger a new one.) The artist bartered a painting with Adrien Brody for the actor’s recitation of the Dali scene from “Midnight in Paris.”
Zapata even lets pals — Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen among them — take reign of his art supplies when he entertains at his boho penthouse that he’s “in the process of buying”: His white couches are haphazardly spray-painted and the words “Love is a drug, do it” are scrawled in red paint on a windowpane.
“The party . . . of course he enjoys it, but it’s not his passion,” says Rebeiz-Nielsen. “His passion is painting. He goes out until 5 or 6 in the morning and he calls us at 8 a.m., and he’s in the studio painting. The guy paints like crazy.”
But Zapata’s dedication hasn’t stopped the tabloid fodder. After all, it was his Porsche that BFF Lohan was driving two weeks ago when she was accused of hitting a pedestrian outside the Dream Hotel.
“I don’t know what happened, but I don’t think she did anything wrong,” Zapata says. (Lohan has not asked to borrow the car since.)
“Just being Lindsay is difficult,” says Zapata. “I think people just try to take advantage of her. Now, I’m not here to judge. So I don’t know what happened, really. I think things happen all the time. But when it happens to her, it multiplies by 10.”
Zapata swears he is not sleeping with the actress, whom he met last year at her Venice house party, where they painted together.
“She has inspired me and gave me a lot of good,” he says, putting out one of the seven cigarettes he smoked over the course of 90 minutes.
Have they ever made out?
“Made out? Do I look like the type of guy who just makes out?” asks Zapata with a hearty chuckle. “I am un toro!”
As for the much buzzed-about paparazzi photo of the actress holding one of Zapata’s young sons in her arms, the bullish painter can’t be bothered to care.
“My life has to be how it is. If there is or is not a camera, I have to be the same person. Because I am a painter. I need inspiration from every moment — from everything. So I can’t change it. Now if I meet Lindsay and she wants to buy something for the kids and this requires taking a picture of her holding my kid, then OK. I’m not going to let a friend not hold my kid,” he explains.
The limelight is still relatively new for the rising star, whom Hus Gallery predicts will be wheeling in a quarter of a million dollars per artwork in three years time.
PHOTOS: ZAPATA’S WORK & INSPIRATION
Zapata grew up in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, where his father was a car painter and his mother a tailor.
He moved to London in 1993, where he attended Regents College, later heading to DC to study at American University.
Zapata met his soon-to-be ex-wife, Stacy Belyea, in London. They have two children together, Paul, 3, and Domingo, 5.
“We didn’t work out, but we are very good friends,” says Zapata, who is still legally married to Belyea — she lives in upstate New York with the boys where she works as a hospital translator. They separated about five years ago, according to Zapata.
At his father’s behest, the Spaniard dabbled in finance post-college and was lucky enough to get involved with a friend’s online dating site that eventually got bought out by Barry Diller.
With the $300,000 or so Zapata made from the sale, he bought a SoHo studio and started to paint full-time; his first professional art show was in NYC in 2004.
In 2005, hedge-fund billionaire George Soros purchased one of his paintings, titled “Blue Horse.”
The artist’s acclaim — and his paintings’ price tags — have risen ever since.
“I am blessed with a little bit of luck that [helped] put my work in front of the right people,” admits Zapata.
Those “right people” have gotten Zapata everything from his current East Village hotel pad — he’s pals with the building’s developer who collects Zapata’s work and gave Zapata the heads up when Ron Burkle moved out of the space — to a studio in Water Mill, LI, lent to Zapata by a generous friend. “That’s why Warhol got so big . . . because the people around him publicized the work he did,” says Rebeiz-Nielsen.
“And that’s the same thing with Domingo; people want to be around him. You can be having dinner with Johnny Depp if you’re with Domingo, or with Leonardo DiCaprio. And for Domingo, that’s just a normal Tuesday night. But for collectors, that’s a real treat.”
“He’s sort of a bigger than life . . . a very outgoing, personable, ebullient guy,” says Miami Heat team president Pat Riley, who owns numerous Zapata paintings, mostly commissioned work. “I don’t think I’ve ever been with him when he didn’t have paint all over his hands and his pants and his hair.”
Zapata’s popularity, on and off the easel, has kept him busy.
The artist, who normally completes 70 paintings a year, has a wait list of 300 for commissioned work.
He recently completed “eight really sexy paintings” for Meat-packing District club Provocateur. He’s doing a painting for the Plaza Hotel lobby, as well as artwork for the Freedom Tower.
His street-art-inspired collection, titled “Collage,” will be shown at the Bowery Hotel on Oct. 24.
Yet his favorite subject to paint still remains women. This is a man who spotted a comely lady at a Parisian cafe, sketched her and tattooed her visage as Pocahontas on his bicep.
“I came back and said to myself, ‘Oh my God, I’m never going to see her again. The love of my life is in Paris,’ ” recalls Zapata.
“I figured that if I talk to her, it’s going to spoil it. So I just keep it as an imagination.”
dschuster@nypost.com