Putting on the Clay

In 1946, as he began his final year at the Slade School of Art, London, Paolozzi discovered a bookshop that was selling batches of war damaged books. Using a page directly from one of these books he would cross-pollinate images from a damaged encyclopedia, engine manual or book on modelling in sculpture to create these beautiful collages. The page used for the present lot is taken from an illustration in Modelling and Sculpture by Albert Toft, first published in 1924. These important and very rare early collages were precursors to his Bunk series, which is often regarded as the birth of Pop Art, and was begun in the same year as this work when he moved to Paris after graduating.