The BMW Artwork Automotive: 50 Years of Pace, Sculpture, and Subversion

There’s one thing a few race automobile that calls for to be checked out. Possibly it’s the crouched stance, the exaggerated aerodynamics, or simply the data that it’s been constructed for pace—not magnificence. However for the previous 50 years, BMW has flipped that concept on its head, turning among the world’s most iconic racing and street vehicles into transferring masterpieces.

The BMW Artwork Automotive mission began as a one-off, a wild thought from French racing driver and auctioneer Hervé Poulain, who needed to enter a race automobile that was as a lot artwork as engineering. What adopted has change into one of the crucial fascinating collaborations between automotive and inventive imaginative and prescient in historical past. Fifty years later, 20 vehicles—some raced, some revered, all revolutionary—proceed to problem what a automobile could be.

And now, to mark the anniversary, BMW is sending them around the globe.

An Anniversary on the Transfer

“The BMW Artwork Automotive Assortment celebrates 50 years of inventive freedom and visionary design. The 20 automobiles have change into worldwide icons, telling tales of society, know-how, and efficiency,” says Ilka Horstmeier, Board Member for Human Sources and Actual Property at BMW Group.

To have fun, BMW is taking its rolling gallery on a world tour, with stops throughout Europe, Asia, and past. The primary occasion, “(R)Evolution of Artwork,” lands in Vienna in March, the place vehicles by Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney, and Jeff Koons can be showcased. Julie Mehretu’s newest Artwork Automotive, a BMW M Hybrid V8, will then head to Artwork Basel Hong Kong earlier than persevering with on an Asian tour.

However that is extra than simply an exhibition. Mehretu is increasing the Artwork Automotive mission past the bodily automobile, internet hosting workshops throughout Africa to assist younger movie and media artists. The outcomes can be proven in 2026 alongside her Artwork Automotive on the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape City, proving that BMW’s artwork obsession isn’t nearly creating quick sculptures—it’s about pushing tradition ahead.

The Artists and the Machines

Over the previous 50 years, BMW has handed over its vehicles to among the most influential artists of every period, giving them free rein to show pace into spectacle. The record reads like an artwork historical past syllabus:

• Alexander Calder / BMW 3.0 CSL / 1975

• Frank Stella / BMW 3.0 CSL / 1976

• Roy Lichtenstein / BMW 320 Group 5 / 1977

• Andy Warhol / BMW M1 Group 4 / 1979

• Ernst Fuchs / BMW 635 CSi / 1982

• Robert Rauschenberg / BMW 635 CSi / 1986

• Michael Jagamara Nelson / BMW M3 Group A / 1989

• Ken Completed / BMW M3 Group A / 1989

• Matazo Kayama / BMW 535i / 1990

• César Manrique / BMW 730i / 1990

• A.R. Penck / BMW Z1 / 1991

• Esther Mahlangu / BMW 525i / 1991

• Sandro Chia / BMW M3 GTR / 1992

• David Hockney / BMW 850 CSi / 1995

• Jenny Holzer / BMW V12 LMR / 1999

• Olafur Eliasson / BMW H₂R / 2007

• Jeff Koons / BMW M3 GT2 / 2010

• Cao Fei / BMW M6 GT3 / 2016

• John Baldessari / BMW M6 GTLM / 2016

• Julie Mehretu / BMW M Hybrid V8 / 2024

Extra Than Only a Present—A Cultural Second

This isn’t simply an artwork exhibition on wheels. It’s a full-scale cultural occasion, full with new books, fashions, and even a vogue assortment. BMW is releasing a 1:18-scale model of Mehretu’s automobile, with a smaller 1:43 mannequin to comply with. A brand new version of the BMW Artwork Automobiles e-book, that includes essays and interviews on the gathering’s historical past, can be on the way in which. And in a transfer that continues BMW’s pattern of bringing Artwork Automotive aesthetics to attire, a 3rd collaboration with Puma is about to launch later this 12 months.

In the meantime, the BMW Museum in Munich is marking the event by combining two anniversaries: the fiftieth anniversary of the Artwork Automobiles and the fiftieth anniversary of the BMW 3 Sequence. A particular exhibition will showcase each milestones, together with a lineup of M3 Artwork Automobiles from Sandro Chia, Michael Jagamara Nelson, and Ken Completed.

BMW Artwork Automotive World Tour 2025 (Choice)

• 20-21 March 2025: SPARK Artwork Truthful and MAK Museum Vienna, Austria

• 28-30 March 2025: Artwork Basel in Hong Kong

• 23 April-2 Could 2025: Shanghai Auto Present, China

• 18-20 April 2025: Artwork Dubai, United Arab Emirates

• Sept. 11 Could 2025: Taipei Dangdai, Taiwan

• 23-25 Could 2025: Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, Lake Como, Italy

• 16 June 2025-1 January 2026: BMW Museum, Munich

• 3 July-31 August, 2025: Louwman Museum, The Hague, Netherlands

• 24-28 September 2025: Modern Istanbul, Turkey

The Artwork Automotive World Tour will proceed by way of 2026, with deliberate stops in Australia, Latin America, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, and the USA.

BimmerFile’s Take

A half-century on, the BMW Artwork Automotive mission stays one of the crucial fascinating intersections of artwork and motorsport. It’s playful, it’s provocative, and in contrast to most automotive artwork, it’s by no means static. These aren’t simply vehicles parked in a gallery—they’ve been raced, pushed, and, in some circumstances, crashed. They blur the road between efficiency and efficiency artwork.

Because the tour kicks off and BMW continues to push the Artwork Automotive mission into new territories, one factor stays clear: that is greater than only a advertising and marketing stunt. It’s a reminder that vehicles—particularly ones as obsessively engineered as a BMW—could be extra than simply machines. They are often canvases. They are often sculptures. They are often statements.

And, generally, they’ll even be higher than the art work itself. Simply ask Warhol.

BMW Artwork Automotive Photograph Gallery