Doktor K. Tortur

Robert Melville comments on the present work, 'It was the sight of the bulky Zebra Kid squeezing into a Volkswagen that started the artist visualizing an imaginary German wrestler. He has in mind a superior type, with instincts of a kind that one might associate with a pre-war Prussian cavalry officer; but he would not wish to convey the impression that one has to be superior and German to be interested in horses, women and fast cars. The car in the row of models on the top of the frame is a Mercedes, and although the powder compact included in the group of mementoes below the portrait was bought in Dublin, the image of the girl wearing boots and showing her knickers seems rather more Germanic than Gaelic. The sports medal and the ivory cigarette holder are German and the ribbon is of course in the national colours. The figure centred on the top of the frame is fragmentary only because the artist has not visualized the entire wrestler. Doktor Karl Tortur, to give him his full name, is not a one-armed wrestler' (Peter Blake, exhibition catalogue, Robert Fraser Gallery, October-November 1965).

Little Lady Luck, from 1965, a collage depicting a female wrestler was sold at Christie's, London on 9 June 2002, lot 110, for £88,450, the world record at auction for the artist's work.