There is something a touch pop art about Lamborghini cars. The design is exaggerated with its cartoonish shapes and extreme angularity. So, it feels fitting that the Italian marque has enlisted Skyler Grey, a rising star of street art, to make this Aventador S into a unique artwork. Presented at Monterey Car Week, this one-off art car has been a highly complex creative project, as the team were keen to make the Aventador S by Skyler Grey the first street-legal work of art on four wheels.

Listed on the Forbes “30 under 30” in 2017 as one the most influential global artists, Grey has been crowned the “fresh Prince of street art”. Represented by the Avant Gallery, his style fuses images of pop culture icons – Popeye, Olive Oyl, Mickey Mouse, Wonder Woman – with luxury iconography – Chanel, Hermes and Louis Vuitton logos. Grey is often compared to the giants of pop art and street art – Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. At only 19, he happens to be the youngest artist to have his work exhibited in museums and international art fairs including SCOPE during Art Basel in Switzerland and Art Wynwood in Miami.

The Lamborghini project took over a year to finalize. To start with, the car was prepped to be much like an artist’s canvas, or street wall, at the new Lamborghini paint shop at Sant’Agata, Bolognese. The artist then collaborated with an internal team of technologists and specialists in painting, logistics, assembly and quality to realize the complete car we see here today.

Grey worked with classic street art methodologies – airbrushing, spray guns, rollers and stencils – and utilized bold pop colors mainly orange and yellow. The orange base color, Arancio Atlas, acts as a canvas for Grey to put is spin on the Lamborghini bull trademark. The exterior parts are enlivened with bold, irregular brushstrokes in yellow, dark orange and white, interspersed with splashes of color and paint dripped onto the surface using the drip painting technique.

The body is characterized by the alternating of three colors, which is then animated by stylized images of bulls running along the side, emerging from the air intakes in a race and from a Campbell soup can – a direct reference to Warhol’s famous “32 Campbell’s Soup Cans” series. Grey’s signature appears on the bodywork accompanied by the trademark lightning bolt above his name, to confirm the authenticity and uniqueness of this work of art.

The interior is finished in a black Nero Ade leather with contrasting orange stitching. The artist has personalized the rear panel with an embroidered image of a cartoon bull, situated between spots of colored paint with a splash effect – with Lamborghini’s upholstery specialists interpreting Grey’s bull design.

The Aventador S by Skyler Grey is part of the pilot project called “Lamborghini Sicura”, launched in collaboration with software firm Salesforce and aimed at protecting the car as a work of art. It involves a process of authenticity certification via the company’s Blockchain technology to guarantee data security and incorruptibility.

“Because of the affinity we feel with the world of art, we wanted to experiment with a new creative approach,” says Katia Bassi, chief marketing officer of Automobili Lamborghini, “entrusting Skyler Grey with the interpretation of a car that is already itself a work of art. It is a project connected with our new paint shop in Sant’Agata Bolognese, a place where technology and art meet and where our specialists are tasked with turning our customers’ dreams into reality, in the search for aesthetic perfection.”

The Aventador S by Skyler Grey has been purchased by an art collector.