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Frank Stella and his BMW Art Car

19. Jul 2024 
by Ziv Knoll
1786 views

Artist Frank Stella with the BMW Art Car he designed for the 1976 Le Mans 24 Hours (picture above). The car, a BMW 3.0 CSL Turbo was entered by BMW Motorsport and driven by Brian Redman and Peter Gregg was fast, but retired because of an oil leak, early in the race.

In 1976 this BMW 3.0 CSL shot around the race circuit at 300 km/h at the Le Mans 24-hour race which is nothing out of the ordinary for a BMW race car. What did stand out was the fact that it was a high-speed BMW Art Car designed by Frank Stella.

The presentation of the world’s second Art Car generated immense anticipation as the art world was still under the spell of the first BMW Art Car designed by Alexander Calder.

These expectations were more than satisfied as Stella devised a black and white design based on oversize graph paper. Cut-out lines all over the bodywork intensify the geometric look of the car. Explaining the thinking behind his high-speed work of art, Frank Stella, born in 1936 said, “My design is a kind of blueprint applied to the entire body of the car.”

 

Source: Motorsport Photography

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