Wallace Wyss, a longtime contributor to My Car Quest and co-host on Autotalk, a radio talk show, will be a featured artist at Back to the Grind, a noted arts-oriented cafe located at 3575 University in Riverside during the month of February.
Wyss started his career as an ad copywriter in Detroit, but moved out to Los Angeles in 1970 to become an associate editor of Motor Trend.
He has authored 18 books on cars, one of which, Shelby’s Wildlife, about race driver Carroll Shelby, was a best seller with 50,000 sold.
In 2009, Wyss accidentally became a fine artist. “I had made a portrait of Shelby to display on a table with my books at a car show when someone who bought the book insisted on also buying the promotional painting,” he recalls, “so I began painting my favorite cars.”
Shah of Iran’s Bugatti by Wallace Wyss
He has since completed over 100 paintings, one of which, a portrait of a Delahaye 165, graces the Mullin Museum in Oxnard.
He gets a kick out of the fact that because he has no art degree the French call him a “primitif.” Says Wyss “I prefer the French spelling, because it sounds so wild and woolly.”
Wyss’ work covers prewar “streamline moderne” like Bugattis right up to the sports cars of the Fifties and Sixties, and even the very latest cars, including the 2020 Corvette.
Bugatti in Paris…portrait by Wallace Wyss
The display will also feature one of his series of books on barn-finding vintage cars and a jacket emblazoned with one of his paintings.
Art venues can contact Wyss at mendoart7@gmail.com.
Wallace Wyss with one of his Ferrari paintings at a Malibu car show
Speak Your Mind