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Untitled (Motorcycle Helmet), c. 1965
Artist anonymous
Oil on canvas
21 × 21 inches (framed)
Signed “copyright” lower right
An anonymous mid-century painting created as a personal gift for Salvatore Scarpitta, the American artist best known for his sculptural investigations of speed, motion, and velocity. The inscription “copyright”—an unusual and idiosyncratic mark—appears here as a personal gesture rather than a conventional artist’s signature.
From 1959 to 1992, Scarpitta had ten solo exhibitions at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York and participated in numerous group shows alongside figures such as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and John Chamberlain. His work is held in major institutional collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Outside the art world, Scarpitta was deeply immersed in sprint car racing. He owned and operated a sprint car team based in New Chester, Pennsylvania, racing under the number 59 on the central Pennsylvania circuit, with victories at Williams Grove, Lincoln, and Susquehanna Speedways. His approach to racing—sensory, material, and human rather than statistical—mirrored his artistic concerns. Tires, mud, fuel, sound, and velocity formed a lived vocabulary that shaped both his art and his life.
This painting sits at the intersection of outsider gesture and insider world: an anonymous object made not for the market, but for a friend whose life blurred the boundaries between high art, mechanical obsession, and lived experience.