A STORY AROUND EVERY TURN

Creations by Andy Warhol and Julie Mehretu take to the show field to celebrate 50 years of BMW Art Cars

For half a century, BMW Art Cars have provided a creative platform for renowned artists from across the globe to express their vision on an automobile. At the 74^th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance^®, the signature event of Pebble Beach Automotive Week, artbuffs and motorsport fans alike will be treated to a rare display of two spectacular examples from BMW’s storied collection. 

For the first time ever, BMW Art Car No. 20 by New York–based artist Julie Mehretu will be presented in North America, alongside BMW Art Car No. 4 by legendary pop art icon Andy Warhol.

This year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance serves as the perfect venue to celebrate these two American-made masterpieces, as 2025 marks the 50^th anniversaries of the BMW Art Car collection and BMW officially doing business in the USA.

“We are absolutely thrilled to be able to present two exceptional BMW Art Cars at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance on the 50th Anniversary of the BMW Art Car initiative,” said Tom Plucinsky, Head of BMW Classic USA. “We have no doubt that the stunning vistas of Pebble Beach will provide a wonderful backdrop for these two works of art by Andy Warhol and Julie Mehretu.”

The BMW Art Car initiative began when French racing driver and art dealer Hervé Poulain, together with then–BMW Head of Motorsport Jochen Neerpasch, asked his artist friend Alexander Calder to paint a car. The result was a completely reimagined BMW 3.0 CSL, which went on to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1975 and became a crowd favorite. In the years that followed, art icons like Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Esther Mahlangu, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, and Julie Mehretu have enriched the collection, each in their own individual style.

“Fifty years ago, when Alexander Calder was invited to paint what would become the first BMW Art Car, the world was still debating whether cars themselves could be ‘art’,” said Sandra Button, Chairman of the Pebble Beach Concours. “There was even debate as to whether cars could be the subject of fine art. With its Art Cars, BMW shouted a definitive ‘yes’—and we applaud them for it. The Pebble Beach Concours has long celebrated the art of the car. We’ve been honored to feature several BMW Art Cars on our show field in the past, and we look forward to showcasing another selection this year. Each art car offers viewers a new way of seeing cars.”

The BMW vehicles that have been turned into works of art using a wide variety of graphic and artistic techniques are as different as the artists themselves—from pure racing thoroughbreds to production vehicles and rare sports cars. The results are all vastly different. No two vehicles are alike. BMW Art Car collaborators are selected by an independent worldwide jury of gallerists and curators, and the artist always maintains complete creative freedom throughout the entire process. 

BMW Art Car #4 by Andy Warhol (1979)
When BMW Motorsport and Hervé Poulain received American pop artist Andy Warhol’s proposal for a racing 320i that BMW (with Poulain as one of the drivers) was to enter in the 1978 24 Hours of Le Mans, they saw a problem. The jet-black paint and flowery mauve overlay Warhol had created covered the entire vehicle including the windows, making driving impossible. So, BMW Motorsport suggested that Warhol try something else, this time on a new prototype BMW Motorsport had been working on to go head-to-head against Porsche in Group 4 racing: the M1.

Warhol’s addition to the BMW Art Car collection came during a period when the artist was experimenting with abstraction and gestural painting. In a departure from the pop iconography that defined much of his earlier work, Warhol’s BMW Art Car embraced a more visceral, dynamic approach. Poulain himself described Warhol’s creative process as performative. Warhol applied over thirteen pounds of Sikkens polymer-based paint by hand in just 28 minutes. The resulting brush strokes, drips, fingerprints, and scratches make the work feel deeply human and embody a uniquely personal expression. “I attempted to show speed as a visual image. When an automobile is really traveling fast, all the lines and colors are transformed into a blur,” he said in explanation of his work.

BMW Art Car No. 4 proved that a work of art can be not only beautiful but also lightning fast around the racetrack. In 1979, German race driver Manfred Winkelhock, together with Poulain and Marcel Mignot, took the unique mid-engine BMW M1 Group 4 to second place in its class during the legendary 24 Hours of Le Mans.

BMW Art Car #20 by Julie Mehretu (2024)
Space, movement, and energy have always been central motifs in Julie Mehretu’s work. For the design of BMW Art Car No. 20, the Ethiopian born, New York based contemporary artist transformed a two-dimensional image into a three-dimensional representation, with which she succeeded in bringing dynamism into form. Mehretu used the color and form vocabulary of her monumental painting “Everywhen” (2021–2023) as a starting point for her design. Its abstract visual form results from digitally altered photographs, which are superimposed in several layers of dot grids, neon-colored veils, and the black markings characteristic of Mehretu’s work.

“In the studio, where I had the model of the BMW M Hybrid V8, I was just sitting in front of the painting and I thought: What would happen, if this car seemed to go through that painting and becomes affected by it?” the artist said of her inspiration. “The idea was to make a remix, a mash-up of the painting. I kept seeing that painting kind of dripping into the car. Even the kidneys of the car inhaled the painting.”

The fusion of image and vehicle was realized with the help of 3D mapping, with which the motif was transferred to the contours of the vehicle. The elaborate lightweight foiling allowed for the fully transformed BMW M Hybrid V8 to compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2024. Mehretu’s creation made its World Premiere at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on May 21, 2024.