Past Imperfect/ Juan Carlos Ferrigno:Gordon Crosby, Michael Turner, Peter Helck - just a few of the artists who have embraced motoring subjects down the years. To these must now be added the name of an artist whose work today achieves outstanding prices and who produces paintings that are both striking and highly original.
Juan Carlos Ferrigno was born in May 1960 in Buenos Aires in Argentina where his father was a mechanic. In 1971, aged 11, his father took him to his first motor race, the Buenos Aires 1,000km sports car race, an event which changed his life.
Juan Carlos remembers: "For the first time I saw the Porsche 917, the Ferrari 512, the Matra, and the Alfa Romeo. I fell in love immediately with the noise, the speed, the colours of the cars, the whole intoxicating atmosphere." Juan Carlos also witnessed the downside of motor racing that day when the Italian driver Ignazio Giunti died in a fiery accident in front of the young boy.
Nevertheless, he was hooked on motor sport and began to read whatever motoring magazines he could lay his hands upon. In 1972 his father took him to the opening round of the F1 World Championship where he watched Jackie Stewart win in a Tyrrell. When he came home he took out some paper and started to draw the cars he had seen.
Leaving school and starting work as a courier he began to purchase the French and British racing magazines and became a regular visitor to the race track at Buenos Aires. Eventually, he had sufficient drawings to go and see the people who produced Argentina's only motor sport magazine, Parabarisas Corsa.
They encouraged Juan Carlos to concentrate on painting rather that drawing, advice he took, finding a job shortly afterwards in a graphic studio. This led to him forming a new studio with a partner but times were difficult - the Falklands war had begun and Argentina was suffering from runaway inflation.
In 1985 Juan Carlos attended fine art school. From his work painted at this time one can see the beginnings of his quest to find new ways of conveying the speed which is such a part of motor sport, and which is the overriding characteristic of his work today.
In 1988 he moved to Spain and began to do work for Soto Moto and Soto Auto magazines. His illustrations for these magazines led to a wide variety of commissions and eventually, in 1994, his first highly successful exhibition, which was held in Barcelona.
Today, Juan Carlos Ferrigno remains based in Barcelona from where his work finds a world-wide audience. In recent years his work has been increasingly critically acclaimed, and fetches high prices in the thriving motor sport art market.
His painting style is unmistakable and examples of his work are to be found in private collections all over the world and in the homes of many of motor racing's greats. For the 11-year-old who fell in love with motor racing, it's been a long and often difficult road to success, but there can be little doubt that Juan Carlos Ferrigno is one of the greatest painters ever to paint motor racing subjects.