Monday, December 29, 2014

Tipo Latino



This painting was done for Charals Haagen, owner of this terrific Ferrari 212. It is chassis number 219EL and built in 1952. While working for Carrozzeria Vignale in Turin, designer Giovanni Michelotti would do these fabulous renderings of exotic shapes and they would be interpreted by Vignale's craftsmen into three dimensional form. Vignale labelled this car "Tipo Latino" for reasons beyond my knowledge.
 I have followed this car around for almost thirty years and have a ton of reference shots of it from when Paul Forbes had it. There are so many unique features and this is one of the few cars remaining today that still have original paint and interior. This is not the product of what a restorer thinks it should look like, but actually the way it was designed and built 62 years ago.
Here I  did my best to emulate Michelotti's drawing style in the background. Then the actual car is presented in full color if front of the rendering on old blueprint type paper. The car is pale yellow with grey side panels. Although very unusual (and doesn't sound that great on paper) it is strikingly beautiful in person. Italians historically have a brilliant sense of design and color.
I just love this thing and was delighted when Charals asked me to do its portrait. We were introduced by Steve Beckman many years ago and that resulted in Charals buying my original painting "Obsessed". Since then ideas have been percolating in our brains and this is what finally came to boil. Tipo Latino in oil.