andy warhol paints bmw m1 with vivid, intuitive brushstrokes
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its Art Car Collection, BMW is taking its famed ‘rolling sculptures’ — vehicles transformed into vivid canvases — on a world tour. The tour’s most recent stop is at Art Dubai, where BMW has unveiled one of its most iconic collaborations with Andy Warhol. In 1979, the Pop Artist first took to the shell of the BMW M1 and translated its vehicle’s speed and fluidity into a composition of bold, expressive, and almost intuitive gestures. Warhol completed the artwork in just 28 minutes.
The M1 was the fourth commission in BMW’s now decades-spanning Art Car series, and Warhol’s approach remains one of its most radical. In contrast to earlier artists, including Alexander Calder, Frank Stella, and Roy Lichtenstein, who designed their works via preparatory sketches or scale models, Warhol insisted on painting the vehicle himself. Working directly onto the body of the car and by hand, he applied around 13 pounds of paint in loose, gestural strokes meant to evoke motion. ‘I have tried to give a vivid depiction of speed. If a car is really fast, all the contours and colors will become blurred,’ he said of the project.
all images courtesy of BMW
bmw art car world tour heads to art dubai 2025
Andy Warhol’s BMW M1 Art Car was only the fourth vehicle in a collection that has since grown to include 20 cars, transformed by a diverse group of renowned artists over five decades. Since its inception in 1975, the BMW Art Car series has invited leading figures in contemporary art to reinterpret the automobile as a cultural object with no creative limits. French racing driver and art enthusiast Hervé Poulain originally conceived the initiative, envisioning the car as both a high-speed machine and a mobile canvas. He collaborated with BMW and enlisted Alexander Calder to paint the first model, establishing what would become a long-standing tradition.
For Warhol’s M1, the vehicle itself, designed by famed Italian automotive designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, was still a relatively recent innovation at the time, as BMW’s first mid-engine sports car and a bold attempt to establish itself within the realm of high-performance motorsport. The intervention in 1979 also came during a period in the artist was experimenting with abstraction, gestural painting, and concepts of authorship. Departing from the pop iconography that defined much of his earlier work, like his Campbell’s soup cans and silkscreened celebrity portraits, this collaboration leaned towards a more visceral, intuitive approach. Poulain himself had likened Warhol’s process of creation here to an act to a performance.
BMW’s Art Car world tour stops at Art Dubai with Andy Warhol’s M1
In 1979, the same year it was painted, Warhol’s Art Car entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans, driven by Poulain alongside German driver Manfred Winkelhock and France’s Marcel Mignot. It placed sixth overall and second in its class, making it one of the few Art Cars to have been raced competitively. Following its performance at Le Mans, the M1 was retired from the track and became part of BMW’s permanent collection.
the ‘rolling sculpture’ was created by Warhol in 1979
