Art and Cars: Enrico Ghinato, the Reflection of Beauty

One of the defining qualities of Italian Renaissance painting lies in the precision of the details occupying the background behind the principal scene. The Mona Lisa herself, studied closely, reveals landscapes behind her that deepen her mystery.

Enrico Ghinato’s painting draws on this same technique – in its scrupulous realism – replacing the figure of Monna Lisa with the bodywork of the cars he portrays.

Taruffi’s Ferrari 315 S at the Mille Miglia lives again in Enrico Ghinato’s painting with hyperrealist precision. A tribute to the myth of Italian motor racing, where light, matter, and memory transform the car into an icon.

These do not appear merely decorated but become magical mirrors of the surrounding world. The effect lends a particular enchantment to the large-format oil works of this Veneto artist, who lives and works in Pieve di Cadore, in the Belluno Dolomites – a town he delights in noting as the birthplace, around 1488, of the great Tiziano Vecellio. His technique rests on the perfection with which he renders everything reflected in, and everything surrounding, the cars he paints – beginning with a rendering of the car itself so faithful it borders on the real.

Enrico Ghinato’s works are painted in oil on canvas – as with this 1964 Alfa Romeo TZ2, portrayed at large format. The bodywork becomes a painterly surface, capable of gathering light, reflections, and fragments of the world around it.

His works grow naturally from photographs he takes himself, whenever he finds a situation that offers the double effect he seeks: a magnificent car, a magnificent reflective surface. His exhibitions – including one at the Museo Ferrari in Maranello among many others – explore different themes, always with the car at their centre. The appeal of his paintings is such that many collectors and enthusiasts commission works depicting their own cars and, in a number of cases, themselves behind the wheel. Images always rendered in a style where realism yields to reverie, and where passion is given room to take over.

At the heart of Enrico Ghinato’s painting there is often a photograph taken by the artist himself, chosen for the dialogue between the car’s form and what its bodywork reflects. Realism becomes charged with atmosphere and passion – as in this Maserati A6GCS/53 Spider, oil on canvas, 100 × 160 cm.

A visit to his studio is a rich experience: though he works with several galleries, Ghinato – now in his seventies – prefers to remain free in choosing his own subjects, and takes pleasure in painting on commission only after long conversations with the client, having come to understand their ambitions and their taste.

Not only the great classics: Enrico Ghinato’s painting also turns its gaze to more modern sports cars, such as the Porsche 993 Carrera S and Turbo. The era changes, but his fascination with form, surface, and reflection – the elements that transform a car into a painterly image – remains intact.