Transatlantic Style: A Romance of Fins and Chrome, is an exhibition showing the creative storm in automotive design shared between the United States and Italy during the post-World War II period. It is based on the book Stile Transatlantico / Transatlantic Style: A Romance of Fins and Chrome that premiered at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance last year as a spectacular large-format hardcover edition, telling the compelling story of this rich creative exchange, the societal and economic forces that helped to drive it and the personalities that populated it. It is the first book ever written on a topic that is arguably the one of the most important and relevant in the collector car industry today. Author Donald Osborne, the greatest-known ‘Transatlantic Style’ expert of our time, is the brilliant mind behind this study, which could otherwise have been a documentation of his great life passions: mid-century art & design, Italian culture and automobiles. In partnership with the Blackhawk Automotive Museum in Danville, California, he has curated this special exhibition with the same title of the book that opened this week and runs through the end of September.
“My goal in creating this Transatlantic Style project is to reveal to a larger world the remarkable work of brilliant designers from this fertile period and how much it was shaped by this cross- cultural exchange,” says Author and Historian Donald Osborne. “Our culture and values today are the result of our pasts and perhaps with a greater understanding we can see what truly open minds in full creative flower can achieve.”
Transatlantic Style: The Exhibition
Besides authoring his book, Donald Osborne wanted to take his study beyond the pages of the volume and into the gallery of the world-respected Blackhawk Automotive Museum in order to offer the public an opportunity to learn and see ‘Transatlantic Style’ in person. With the support of Don Williams, a driving force behind the creation of the Blackhawk Automotive Museum, his carefully-curated exhibition Transatlantic Style: A Romance of Fins and Chrome offers to the American public their first-ever opportunity to walk through history, viewing a select gathering of iconic, jet-age cars together in one setting to really understand the impact these cars have had.
Works of motoring art designed and crafted by brilliant designers and coachbuilders, including Harley Earl for General Motors, Virgil Exner for Chrysler, Giovanni Savonuzzi and Gian Paolo Boano for Ghia, Battista Farina for Pinin Farina and Frank Spring for Touring, are featured in the exhibition. As the author and curator points out, these designers shared ideas and inspired each others’ future works during this fertile period of post-war growth, thus shaping the whole of automotive design between the United States and Italy, impacting history, commerce and the world as a whole.
The exhibition will feature a number of significant collector cars on display, including the:
- Le Sabre
- Cisitalia 202 MM Aerodinamica
- Cisitalia 202 SC Coupe
- Lancia Aurelia B20 Coupe
- Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint
- Nash-Healey Roadster
- Plymouth Belmont
- Chrysler GS-1 Coupe
- Alfa Romeo 1900 CSS Ghia Coupe
- Hudson Italia
- Lancia Aurelia B24 Spider America
- Ghia Streamline X ‘Gilda’
- Chrysler 300F Convertible
- Lancia Flaminia Pinin Farina Coupe
- Maserati 5000GT Touring Coupe
- Cadillac Eldorado Brougham Pinin Farina
“We are extremely pleased to be able to work with Donald on hosting this wonderful exhibition of automotive design, which coincides with our 30thAnniversary,” says Blackhawk Museum’s Executive Director Tim McGrane. “We look forward to welcoming many visitors to the Museum over the next three months and we timed the exhibition so that automotive enthusiasts attending the Pebble Beach Week of events in August will also have the opportunity to visit the Blackhawk Museum.”
Stile Transatlantico: the book
In an unparalleled and in-depth approach that is written in both English and Italian, Donald passionately guides his readers throughout the automotive design history shared between the United States and Italy following World War II, as well as through the love and leadership the two nations shared in creating some of the most beautiful cars ever made. With the cooperation of Corrado Lopresto and Lawrence Auriana, the world’s two leading collectors of Italian cars, combined with Osborne’s New York Times-style storytelling, fascinating case studies and the stunning photography taken by renowned automotive photographer Michael Furman, Donald Osborne’s Transatlantic Style has become the leading written authority on this fascinating chapter of post-war automotive design in the United States as well as Italy.