Abstract art sparked by the language of the automobile is having a visible moment across galleries, museums, and salerooms. In May, Julie Mehretu’s 20th BMW Art Car—an abstract wrap derived from her layered paintings—was unveiled at the Centre Pompidou before competing at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in June, drawing design devotees into an art context. At the same time, auction houses reported steady bidding for car-derived abstractions, from crushed–auto-body sculpture to minimalist “hood” works, suggesting durable crossover appeal among collectors of art and motorsport design.
At the Centre Pompidou in late May, curators framed Julie Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8 as a moving canvas, presenting studies, maquettes, and pigment tests alongside the completed car. The display emphasized how her vectorized marks and vaporous fields translate to compound curves and race-ready laminates without losing painterly charge. The work then traveled to the Circuit de la Sarthe for Le Mans in June, extending the exhibition into public space and highlighting a rare feedback loop between the track and the white cube. Spring auctions in New York and London added market context for automotive abstraction.
Major houses placed John Chamberlain’s auto-body assemblages and Richard Prince’s late-1980s Hood paintings with lively competition, largely within estimate ranges. Specialists cited cross-category interest from design collectors and car enthusiasts, while noting that condition and provenance remain decisive for top results. Institutionally, the theme threaded through surveys and permanent displays this year. Fondation Beyeler’s Frank Stella retrospective, which ran through early summer 2024, foregrounded racetrack-titled abstractions that link speed, engineering, and serial form.
Long-term installations at Dia Beacon and the Chinati Foundation continue to anchor Chamberlain’s legacy, offering audiences a material history of automotive steel recast as sculpture. Programming around these projects has targeted new audiences and education. The Pompidou presentation paired the Mehretu car with talks on paint chemistry and livery design, drawing students from art and industrial-design programs. BMW and the artist also announced a workshop initiative slated for 2025, extending the project’s pedagogical reach.
Dealers, for their part, report that fair-goers this summer are asking pointedly for car-inflected abstraction, a sign that the lane between studio, street, and speedway remains open.
