Austrian Artist Captures Gesture and Motion

Mr. Klaus Wagger’s love of classic GTs echoes our sentiment and he too prefers them over modern wheels.  Trained as an industrial designer, Klaus was working on technical drawings for Volkswagen, fiddling with mind-numbing details when he finally decided to enter a contest to design the 2000 Mille Miglia poster and won! He had kept painting in his spare time in order to capture the emotion, noise and gesture of racing machines as a respite from the millimeter-precise world of his day job.

The winning piece was of a Mercedes-Benz SSK viewed from above and behind entering a turn. Besides the motion that Klaus captures so faithfully, one immediately notices intense colors and the lack of a detailed background if any, which focuses viewers’ attention on the car that much more. Klaus’ ultimate goal is to capture movement and he eschews sketching out his paintings in advance feeling that it limits his expression.

Due to his training as a designer he prefers the enclosed bodywork of sports and GT racers over open-wheel single-seaters. He has drawn inspiration from the golden era of streamlined cars (such as the Bugatti Aerolithe and Delage V12 Grand Sport Labourdette) but his all-time favorite is the Mercedes-Benz Uhlenhaut 300 SLR.

Since his winning entry for the 2000 Mille Miglia poster, Klaus has been hard at work painting. But he’s since won private commissions as well as being the featured artist at the Silverstone Classic Festival and painting the poster for the 2007 Daytona 500 though Retromobile in Paris is the cornerstone of his exhibition schedule.

Click here to see more of his work or to inquire about a painting.

Image Sources: collectorstudio.com, italiansportscar.co.uk, artslant.com, lagalleriapallmall.blogspot.com, gabrielandcompany.com, lagalleriapallmall.blogspot.com, lagalleriapallmall.blogspot.com, lagalleriapallmall.blogspot.com