“I love that car. It turned out better than the artwork.”
ANDY WARHOL
Andy Warhol
The name Andy Warhol is the quintessence of pop art. He was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, USA, and studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology from 1945 to 1949. He began his artistic career as a commercial artist and was already successful in 1952 with his own exhibition in New York. In 1956 his work was awarded the coveted Art Director’ Club Award. In 1962 the legendary Factory was established, a revolutionary denial and reversal of traditional artistic ideas. His portraits of celebrities and paintings of trivial objects became famous. Warhol died in New York in 1987.
Technology and Creativity
Anybody who declares soup cans to be a work of art or suggest closing a whole department store and keeping it as a museum for posterity surely sees no conflict between technology and free artistic composition. Instead of first creating a scale model and leaving the final completion to his assistants, as his predecessors did, the pop art legend painted the BMW M1 himself from start to finish. “I tried to give a vivid representation of speed. When a car is really fast, all the contours and colours become blurred.”
Specifications Andy Warhol BMW M1 Group 4 racing version
- Six-cylinder in-line engine
- 4 valves per cylinder
- Double overhead camshafts
- Displacement: 3500 cm3
- Power: 470 hp
- Top speed: 307 km/h
Racing debut Le Mans
This work of art on wheels was used for the first and last time in the 24-hour race of Le Mans in 1979. The M1 designed by Warhol started on the grid with starting number 76 and was driven by the German Manfred Winkelhock and by Hervé Poulain and Marcel Mignot from France. They achieved sixth place in the general classification and second place in their class.