Mercedes-Benz Gullwing with an Andy Warhol Connection Is for Sale

• This 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing was the topic of a commissioned paintings by Andy Warhol.
• The precise automobile depicted in Warhol’s piece was not too long ago discovered and restored by Brabus.
• The automobile is now being auctioned by RM Sotheby’s via Thursday, November 17.

Andy Warhol’s closing fee was, bizarrely, for Mercedes-Benz. The well-known pop artist was employed to create a sequence of portraits of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, to rejoice the one hundredth anniversary of the corporate’s founding. Initially meant as 80 portraits of 20 vehicles from Mercedes’s century-long heritage, Warhol solely accomplished 49 of those items earlier than he died in 1987.

The primary of those portraits—the prototype because it had been—was of a Mercedes-Benz 300SL. After being misplaced for many years, the precise automobile within the Warhol portray was not too long ago found, and refurbished, by Brabus Germany, a famous restorer (and questionable customizer) of Mercedes automobiles. It’s at the moment up for public sale by RM Sotheby’s in New York Metropolis.

Intriguingly, neither Warhol nor Mercedes initiated the portrait mission. It was the brainchild of Hans Mayer, Warhol’s German seller. Recognizing the milestone of Benz’s centenary, Mayer personally commissioned two Benz work from Andy, with the hope of selling-in the idea to the Mercedes brass. Pondering that the long-lasting Gullwing would take advantage of convincing template, he insisted that this be the topic. However since these had been already 30-year-old collectible classics on the time, a automobile wasn’t useful. Realizing Warhol’s affection for appropriation, Mayer discovered an answer.

“There was a ebook known as SportWagen, German for sports activities vehicles, and a photograph of the 300SL was depicted in it,” mentioned Constantin Buschmann, CEO and proprietor of Brabus. “Warhol took that image straightaway, with out additional analysis, and made it the one in that portray.”

Thankfully for future collectors, Warhol depicted the automobile with its license plate, EI-DR1, connected. Additionally happily, the long-term proprietor of the automobile retained this plate over the intervening many years, even because the automobile deteriorated in situation. This allowed the Brabus crew to finally find the car. It additionally allowed the automobile to be authenticated, with the cooperation of the German DMV and the archives of Mayer’s gallery, Mercedes-Benz, in addition to the Andy Warhol Basis.

Gullwings are blue-chip collectibles, with costs for common examples operating within the low-seven-figure vary and climbing to double or quadruple that for concours-level automobiles like this, particularly with movie star possession. RM Sotheby’s is hoping that this explicit automobile’s identified provenance, and direct connection to Warhol’s famous person standing, will assist juice the hammer value even additional with collectors of vehicles and/or up to date artwork.

“In case you take a can of Campbell’s soup, you do not know which of them Warhol painted,” mentioned Buschmann. “The one object that Andy painted that you simply truly can personal is that this explicit Gullwing.”