Partnering with Go Factory and Wrap & Cover, Balaclava launches in 2022 the open call named Art Car, a project long dreamt of, in which, assuming and maintaining the practice initiated in the begging of the 20th century, Art Car is looked onto as a canvas upon which the artist paints.

+ about the history of Art Car:

It was in the second decade of the 20th century, that the painter and designer Sonia Terk Delaunay adorned a Citröen B12 to match a dress of her own design. She is considered the pioneer of what later would be know as Art Car.

In 1967, the magazine Réalités, upon the context of a fund raiser for the French Foundation for Medical Research, invited five artists to personalize cars from five of the different major world manufacturers: Daf for Carlos Cruz-Diez, Simca 1000 for Agam (Yaacov Gibstein), Opel Kadett para Victor Vasarely, Matra 530 for Sonia Terk Delaunay and Renault 4 for Arman.

Even though Porsche presented in the 24H of Le Mans in 1970 (The Hippe Car), and in 1971(The Pink Pig), both cars adorned by their Designer in Chief, Tony Lapin; is was in 1975 that the auctioneer and pilot Hervé Poulain established the true relationship with the visual arts, by commissioning his friend Alexander Calder for a special paint job for his BMW 3.0 CSL, for that year’s 24H of Le Mans.

Enthused with the project, the motorsport’s director for BMW, Joechen Neerpasch, also a great admirer of art, kept following through with it, inviting artists like Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. BMW then gave continuity to this idea until the present day, being their most recent features of Cao Fei, John Baldessari and Jeff Koons.

Besides BMW, many other brands have invited artists to decorate some of their models, but never from a collector’s perspective, like with BMW’s Art Car Project.