Dirk Becker - Perfectly Imperfect Art

As automotive art, the drawings of German artist Dirk Becker have a unique style. Those familiar with renowned 20th-century artists might recognise an influence from German draftsman, printmaker, poster artist and illustrator Horst Janssen. Janssen had a prolific output of drawings, etchings, woodcuts, lithographs and wood engravings during his lifetime (1929-1995) and many of Becker’s preferred techniques mirror this too.

Becker has been creating art, especially focusing on historic automobiles, since his college days studying to be an electrical engineer over 40 years ago. Becker financed his studies to a large extent through commissioned artwork, back then using an airbrush.
With most of his career having been spent in the automotive industry he never had any formal art training being mostly self-taught. As you would expect from someone who has spent more than 30 years working as an engineer surrounded by cars his renditions of automobiles are extremely accomplished.

Janssen was famous for his etchings and “dirty“ style of ink drawings and similarly, Becker likes his pictures to appear imperfect. “Because old cars and racing tend to be a bit dirty and imperfect - I want the viewer of my pictures to smell the fuel, the oil, the leather and the rubber - I am always looking for the perfect imperfection, so to speak, striving for the most inaccurate straight line,” says Becker.

When it comes to creating his works there are lots of emotions involved. “That is part of my incentive,” he says. “For me, cars were never just means of transport, but always emotional tin creatures that want to be loved or even hated.” This is reflected in his drawing style. Sterile straight lines, especially those drawn using a ruler, are nowhere to be seen in Becker’s work. “I would like people looking at my works to just feel just a tiny bit of those emotions. This is enough to make me happy”.

Becker’s preferred medium is ink on paper as he likes the directed feedback and relationship you build with the materials - the feeling of the ink flowing through the pen and making an indelible mark on the paper. Although recently he has started doing some of his works on the iPad, keeping his unique style. Most original ink drawings are mono, but sometimes he will add colour to the car bodywork. With his limited editions, however, the colour can be added digitally at the reproduction stage, so a large selection of the cars he has drawn can be offered in the owner's preferred colour. Of course, this is possible too with the artworks produced on the iPad.

In addition, he is very fond of producing etchings, woodcuts and linocuts.  “These are challenging and the work is intensive, however, you never know what you get, until you hold the first print in your hands. This makes it so interesting”.

Study closely any of Becker's ink drawings and you will soon realise that there is much more to them than just an illustration of an automobile. Some, like the Dodge Charger RT, have copious amounts of beautiful handwritten informative text clearly incorporated into the artwork - a sort of artist's sketchbook and notebook combined. In others, such as the Aston Martin DB3S of Stirling Moss at Goodwood, the text is much more subtly incorporated into the actual image itself. In this case, the words Aston Martin are repeated many times and cleverly form the dust cloud around the rear of the car that helps to convey motion and visualise speed. Stirling Moss is repeated on the other side as the words are air flowing over the bodywork, and DB3S form the shadow in the top corner of the artwork. It’s this, along with the off-white paper, ink splatters and imperfect lines that make Becker's work so unusual and some of the most attractive ink drawings in the automotive art marketplace today.

When Dirk Becker is not working as an engineer or artist he likes nothing more than driving his 1959 Triumph TR3A through the southern German landscape - preferably the Alps. 

Becker's original works start at $300, limited edition prints from $70 and etchings or woodcuts from $115.

Article written by Rupert Whyte for Automobilia Resource Magazine issue #31