Earlier this year, Juan Manuel Fangio’s former Mercedes Formula 1 car became the most expensive car sold at an auction, fetching $29,650,095 (€21,474,674) at the Goodwood Festival of Speed sale. I only reminded you of that to put into context the price of another work of art - this time literally.
A representation of the streamlined version of the Mercedes W196 R F1 car painted on canvas by famous American artist Andy Warhol will be auctioned for half the price of Fangio's car!
Warhol’s work, titled “Mercedes-Benz W196 R Grand Prix Car (Streamlined Version, 1954)”, will be offered at a Christie’s auction in New York on November 12, 2013, and is estimated to sell for $12 million (€8.68 million) to $16 million (€11.6 million). The painting is owned by the Daimler Art Collection.
Warhol’s work is made using synthetic polymer and silkscreen inks on canvas and is quite big in size: 160.5x180 inches (4,076x4,575mm). A leading figure of the pop art movement, Warhol finished the painting in 1987, the year of his death. At the time, he was working on a series of paintings commissioned by Mercedes-Benz to celebrate the company’s 100th anniversary.
Mercedes wanted Warhol to create 80 artworks inspired by 20 Mercedes models, but the artist’s sudden death in 1987 left the project unfinished. Warhol only made 35 silkscreen prints and 12 drawings of eight Mercedes models. Among the finished works is the one featuring the streamlined version of the 1954 Mercedes W196 R Formula 1 car.
In a similar way to his famous Marilyn Monroe painting, Warhol printed a single model of the W196 several times on one canvas and used different hues for each car that appears on the painting.
By Dan Mihalascu
