New York - BMW Art Car Collection To Be On Display

From March 25th to April 6th, the BMW art car collection will be on display in New York, showing four of the prestigious collection of sixteen cars. Painted and decorated by some of the most renowned artists from across the world, these cars merge together the best of auto and art.

The first car, that initiated this project, was Hervé Poulain’s BMW 3.0 CSL, which was painted by his friend Alexander Calder. Calder was accustomed to painting airliners, and his work sparked the tradition; since then, BMW decided to continue this artwork, with the most recent piece completed in 2007.

The four cars that will be displayed in New York are works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Robert Rauschenburg.

Andy Warhol is an American artist whose work ranges from filmmaking to illustrating to painting. His piece was finished on a 1979 BWM M1, and it combines brilliant basic colours in a modern art design.
Painting a comic-strip inspired design, Roy Lichtenstein’s piece was crafted on a 1977 BMW 320i. Lichtenstein’s work featured the use of Ben-day dots, creating a simple yet stunning artistic effect.

Frank Stella designed a complex graph-paper like design, which was modeled on a 1976 BMW 3.0 CSL, and Robert Rauschenburg included Bonzino’s “Portrait of a Young Man” with Ingres’ “La Grande Odalisque” in his piecing of images, decorating the 1986 BMW 635 CSi.

Since 1975, many different artists worldwide have painted on various BMW cars, including Japanese artist Matazo Kayama, Spain’s Cesar Manrique, and Austrailian artist Ken Done. Evidently, they colour their diverse artistic backgrounds onto their models, displaying artwork that reflect techniques from South African painting traditions, to metal cutting on airbrushed surfaces, to collages and depictions reflective of primitive cave paintings.

The most recent work, completed by Olafur Eliasson in 2007, is a contemporary auto art that was crafted on a 2007 BMW H2R. His piece features a unique frost-covered version of the Hydrogen car that remains in a refrigerated display.

For a video on these art cars click here.