Hypercar Speed Study in Grey, Original Painting

Painters have chased the sensation of a fast car since the Italian Futurists. In 1913 Giacomo Balla turned his studies of racing cars into Abstract Speed, The Car Has Passed, a canvas in which the car itself has already gone and only the disturbance of its passing remains; the painting now belongs to Tate. This work takes up the same question with a modern subject: a low hypercar seen in profile, grey over black, red brake calipers glowing behind open multi-spoke wheels. The car is left unnamed. What the picture records is the instant of passing, the machine reduced to the trace it leaves in the air.

The composition runs as one horizontal band across the middle of the canvas, the car's flank broken into hundreds of fine streaks so that the bodywork seems to smear backwards. Above and below, broad brushed bands of grey and warm stone stand for road and sky. Wheels, sills and window line are drawn with care beneath the blur, and the palette stays almost monochrome, with the red of the calipers as the only warm note. It is an original painting, one of one.