All Photos By Gail

The first car to enter MoMA’s collection, in 1972, the Cisitalia 202, designed in 1946 by Battista “Pinin” Farina (known as Pininfarina) is also the rarest – only approximately 170 of them are known to have been made.

Its small production run was partly due to the handmade qualities of the car: In a process held over from the horse-drawn-carriage trade, the body panels were hammered out over wooden forms as opposed to being stamped by machines (as was more common in mass production).

Pininfarina’s radical design eschews the ornamentation and separation of parts typical of cars of the period in favor of a unified, structural skin, or monocoque. The taut aluminum skin of the 202 GT seems formed by nature rather than by human hands.

Photographed as Part the Exhibit Automania, at the Museum of Modern Art (2021 – 2022)