SIR EDUARDO PAOLOZZI, R.A. (1924-2005)
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's… Read more
SIR EDUARDO PAOLOZZI, R.A. (1924-2005)

Green Dolphin Street

Details
SIR EDUARDO PAOLOZZI, R.A. (1924-2005)
Green Dolphin Street
collage, ink and gouache on paper
12 1/2 x 10 in. (31.8 x 25.4 cm.)
Executed in 1952.
Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner.
Literature
Exhibition catalogue, Paolozzi Portraits, London, National Portrait Gallery, 1988, pp. 25, 31, no. 12, illustrated.
Exhibited
London, National Portrait Gallery, Paolozzi Portraits, May - August 1988, no. 12.
Special notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

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Alice Murray
Alice Murray Head of Evening Sale

Lot Essay

Although Paolozzi is perhaps best known as a sculptor, it was in fact collage that underpinned his creativity and ideas. He first started experimenting with collage as young child in Leith when he would collect cigarette cards of film stars, battleships and motorcars and assemble them into his scrap book- a source material he would continue to use throughout his life. His friend and fellow artist Richard Hamilton once commented to him:
‘It strikes me that all of your work comes out of the techniques of collage, the idea of collage, that you put things together … I mean, even in your most recent works you make separate elements and then assemble them- it’s Meccano work, whether it’s drawing or sticking bits of paper together or making bronzes by lost-was or by using constructive techniques’ (Exhibition catalogue, Eduardo Paolozzi: Collaging Culture, Pallant House, Chichester, 2013, p. 13).

His collages of mass media subjects shown at the ICA have earned him the title the 'Father of Pop', although he was known to say ‘I would rather be known as a Surrealist than a Pop artist' (Exhibition catalogue, Eduardo Paolozzi: Collaging Culture, Pallant House, Chichester, 2013, p. 13). Indeed, the Independent Group’s first event at the ICA in April 1952 has gained mythical status as one of the seminal moments in the development of Pop Art. During the event Paolozzi famously showed quick fire images of his collages executed from American adverts, popular magazines and science fiction, much like the source material in the present lot which uses a magazine advert for the 1947 historic drama Green Dolphin Street starring Van Heflin.

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