BMW Motorsport<\/a>, who received a call from then BMW rally driver Jean Todt presenting him with Poulain\u2019s idea. Neerpasch immediately recognized that Calder\u2019s involvement could turn a racing machine into a rolling sculpture, in the same way as the artist\u2019s kinetic mobiles, and create a \u201chappening\u201d that united \u201cart, technology and speed\u201d. Calder himself said, \u201cWhy must art be static? The next step in sculpture is motion.\u201d <\/p>\nThat spirit of fearless experimentation continues to resonate through the collection, from Warhol\u2019s electrifying 28-minute performance painting and Lichtenstein\u2019s Pop Art meditation on endurance racing to Hockney\u2019s playful deconstruction of the automobile that allows the interior to be seen and Olafur Eliasson\u2019s rarely exhibited hydrogen-powered H2R Project wrapped in a complex skin of steel mesh, shiny metal plates and multiple layers of ice that\u2019s presented in a freezer, which challenged the very definition of what a BMW Art Car could be. <\/p>\n
BMW Art Car #16 by Olafur Eliasson<\/p>\n
Photo courtesy of Studio Olafur Eliasson and BMW Group<\/p>\n
As Thomas Girst, Global Head of BMW Group Cultural Engagement, explains, the BMW Art Car collection\u2019s enduring significance lies not simply in the caliber of its artists, but in the extraordinary collaborations that have continually pushed the boundaries between art, engineering and innovation\u2014ensuring that this once-in-a-lifetime reunion ranks among the most important cultural events of 2026. I sit down with Girst as he reflects on the visionaries, masterpieces and moments that transformed painted racing cars into one of the world\u2019s longest-lasting art and automotive partnerships.<\/p>\n
This summer, all 20 BMW Art Cars are gathered under one roof for the first time. Among the artists\u2014from Alexander Calder and Andy Warhol to Julie Mehretu\u2014which collaborations surprised you the most?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s surprising to see that anything can happen when it comes to a BMW Art Car. Andy Warhol was a great surprise because he painted the car, which some consider to be the most valuable car on planet earth. He was always about wanting to turn into a machine. He called his studio in New York \u201cThe Factory\u201d. He wanted to get rid of the hand. That\u2019s why he invented the silkscreen process as a work of art. Then he was confronted with an industrial design object, and, all of a sudden, he created this choreography, dancing around the car, painting the car, signing the car onto the wet paint with his fingers, becoming a human again vis-\u00e0-vis the machine that he actually always said he aspired to be. Olafur Eliasson was a surprise and it wasn\u2019t an easy sell within the company because the first thing he did was to rip out the BMW logo from the H2R hydrogen car to turn it into something else completely. Julie Mehretu was a surprise because she was eager to also return something to the continent of Africa in which she was born, so she not only created a BMW Art Car, but on top of it, came up with the African Film and Media Arts Collective with workshops around the African continent about documentary filmmaking. So it\u2019s all about honoring the artist\u2019s vision and making true whatever it is that they have on their minds, far exceeding the car itself from time to time. That is definitely the biggest surprise\u2014that there\u2019s no limit to artistic excellence.<\/p>\n
BMW Art Car #12 by Esther Mahlangu, BMW 525i, 1991<\/p>\n
Photo courtesy of BMW AG<\/p>\n
Luxury brands increasingly collaborate with artists, yet very few partnerships remain culturally relevant after half a century. Why have the BMW Art Cars endured?<\/p>\n
I absolutely agree with your assessment that much of those partnerships of luxury brands end up on the side of bling-bling and not on the side of meaning, which is very important. I would argue that luxury really has to do with the time that we are able to devote to a subject matter that is of interest to us, and that, as the sociologist Hartmut Rosa defined, creates a resonance\u2014a resonance with another human being, a resonance with a work of art. That is what makes living worthwhile. That is what adds depth and meaning to life. If collaborations between luxury brands and the arts can achieve that, that is something great because it opens up a discourse and a dialog for everybody who is interested in looking, who is interested in delving into something that shows how great human beings can create amazing works of art that resonate if we put our heads together and if we don\u2019t bash our heads in.<\/p>\n
So what has prevented the BMW Art Cars from becoming mere marketing objects?<\/p>\n
BMW Art Cars are always a great collaboration: a co-creation of sorts between the artist and his or her vision and our engineers, designers, mechanics, those in the pit stop, the race car drivers and everything else. It brings out the best in everyone. And I think that is what has prevented the BMW Art Cars from becoming mere marketing objects. It\u2019s also about that they\u2019re not there to support the launch of a new model, that they\u2019re not there to be churned out every year. Sometimes there are nine years between one Art Car and the next, and I think that adds some trustworthiness to the whole trajectory of the BMW Art Cars, with 20 BMW Art Cars having been created in 50 years.<\/p>\n
American artist Alexander Calder with Herv\u00e9 Poulain, a French auctioneer and amateur race car driver<\/p>\n
Photo courtesy of BMW AG<\/p>\n
Looking back, how important was the original vision of Herv\u00e9 Poulain and Jochen Neerpasch?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s the idea of the BMW Art Car nucleus that wasn\u2019t born out of PR and marketing people putting their heads together, thinking how can we introduce the brand BMW to the arts. It came out of the true passion and love of two men, Herv\u00e9 Poulain and Jochen Neerpasch, our motorsports director and founder, who put their heads together at the racetrack of Le Mans, thinking of what they could do together by having a car painted that would then race within the BMW fleet.<\/p>\n
So it was about the love for racing and the love for contemporary art, and I\u2019m so happy that Jochen Neerpasch said yes to Herv\u00e9 Poulain\u2019s idea and suggestion over 50 years ago. Nobody thought that the BMW Art Car series would evolve around this amazing initial idea. The 3.0 CSL by Alexander Calder was supposed to be a one-off, but as it was cheered on by the crowds, parents, children and everybody else on the racetrack, we thought we had something and we continued\u2014obviously the next year already with Frank Stella, then with Roy Lichtenstein, then with Andy Warhol.<\/p>\n
Fifty years on, what do the BMW Art Cars ultimately represent?<\/p>\n
We have a responsibility looking into the future of not watering down what I would refer to as a sub-brand of BMW. It still makes everybody happy to look at these BMW Art Cars, to look at these great achievements of artistic and engineering excellence. I think what is important is that it\u2019s not only about arts and culture; it\u2019s about engineering, mechanics, racing, art, design, lifestyle\u2014all of this coming together with the BMW Art Cars at the intersection of exactly those different realms of human achievement, which makes them stand out, which makes them make a difference. I do think that is what ultimately turns them into something of value, if not monetary value, then value in terms of true meaning, in terms of seeing the object of the car through the art and seeing the art through the car, something that will resonate in centuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BMW Art Car Collection in front of BMW Welt in Munich Photo courtesy of BMW AG The story…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65381,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20955],"tags":[49493,7018,925,3020,6213,48876,8069,49495,49494,749],"class_list":["post-65380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bmw","tag-alexander-calder","tag-andy-warhol","tag-art","tag-artist","tag-bmw","tag-bmw-art-cars","tag-jeff-koons","tag-jochen-neerpasch","tag-julie-mehretu","tag-sculpture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}