Ferrari art to be featured among other art at Riverside cafe February

Local Radio Personality to Make Riverside Debut as Fine Artist in February in Riverside


Wallace Wyss, a longtime co-host on Autotalk, a radio talk show emanating from KUCR FM Riverside, will be a featured artist at Back to the Grind, a noted arts-oriented coffee house located at 3575 University in Riverside during the month of February, starting Feb. 4th.

Wyss started his career as an ad copywriter in Detroit, but moved out to Los Angeles in 1970 to become an associate editor of Motor Trend.

He has authored 18 books on cars, one of which, Shelby's Wildllife, about race driver Carroll Shelby, was a best seller with 50,000 sold.

In 2009, Wyss, who has a degree in journalism, accidentally became a fine artist. "I had made a portrait of Shelby to display on a table with my books at a car show when someone who bought the book insisted on also buying the promotional painting," he recalls, "so I began painting my favorite cars."

He has since completed over 100 paintings, one of which, a portrait of a Delahaye 165, graces the Mullin Museum in Oxnard.

He gets a kick out of the fact that--because he has no art degree-the French call him a "primitif." Says Wyss "I prefer the French spelling, because it sounds so wild and woolly."

Wyss' work covers prewar "streamline moderne" like Bugattis right up to the sports cars of the Fifties and Sixties, and even the very latest Ferraris.

The display will also feature one of his series of books on barn-finding vintage cars and a jacket emblazoned with one of his paintings.
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