At the nexus of engineering and art are great cars. Since the mid-1970s, BMW has collaborated with internationally recognized artists to adorn its automobiles as part of the Art Car initiative, which elevates this partnership to a new level.
The German automaker commissioned visual artist Julie Mehretu to design a vibrant skin for its M Hybrid V8 racer as the 20th BMW Art Car.
On May 21, 2024, the BMW Art Car, created by Mehretu, made its world premiere at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. This newest car in the BMW Art Car collection will participate in the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race in June, an event that Mehretu considers to be an essential component of this creative process. “The BMW Art Car is only completed once the race is over,” Mehretu states.

Since the BMW V12 LMR won the race in 1999, this BMW M Hybrid V8 will be the first BMW M Motorsport prototype to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Later, in the Hypercars division of the FIA World Endurance Championship events, the 2024 BMW Art Car will take against world-class competition.

Born in Ethiopia and raised in the United States from the age of seven, New York-based Mehretu used her monumental “Everywhen” (2021-2023) painting as the inspiration for the car. “Everywhen” is currently on view at the artist’s major retrospective at the Palazzo Grassi in Venice and will soon join the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
That painting, and much of Mehretu’s work, explores space, movement, and energy, themes that are reflected in her BMW Art Car.

A series of Pan-African Translocal Media Workshops for filmmakers is another aspect of BMW’s partnership with Mehretu. The workshops will travel to Dakar, Senegal, Marrakech, Morocco, Kigali, Rwanda, Lagos, Nigeria, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Cape Town, South Africa, and Zanzibar, Tanzania during the course of the following two years. The climax of the tour will be a large exhibition held at the Zeitz Museum in Cape Town, South Africa.