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Lot Essay
Among the first works made by Paolozzi soon after he arrived in Paris in June 1947 were a series of drawings and collages based on the French fair and lottery booths which he saw in the Denfert Rochereau district of the city, where the Russian artist Grégoire Michonze lent him a studio. In 1948 Paolozzi described how he went about making them: 'the whole conception is the box. I have taken the shooting gallery, but a shop would have done just as well. I take it apart, put the bits together in a different way. Then I draw the new bits. Sometimes I stick on pieces of coloured paper instead of paint. They are part of a theme, each is a separate conception. It is what the French call the cuisine'.
Loterie was made for Paolozzi's second exhibition at the Mayor Gallery, London, An Exhibition of Recent Drawings by Eduardo Paolozzi in February 1948, which consisted of twenty-seven fair, and three lottery booth drawings, of which Loterie, which remained in the artist's collection, was almost certainly one. The Mayor Gallery archive records the sale of seventeen of the twenty-seven fair drawings in February 1948. An 'ex-cat' collage was bought direct from Paolozzi by Colin St John ('Sandy') Wilson, then an architectural student, in unusual circumstances which Wilson described in the Pallant House Gallery catalogue; the encounter inaugurated a lifelong friendship. However, none of the three lottery booth drawings in the exhibition appear to have sold, perhaps because their starker geometry, strangely prescient of Jasper Johns's 'Target' series of the next decade, were too abstract for contemporary taste.
We are very grateful to Robin Spencer for preparing this catalogue entry.
Loterie was made for Paolozzi's second exhibition at the Mayor Gallery, London, An Exhibition of Recent Drawings by Eduardo Paolozzi in February 1948, which consisted of twenty-seven fair, and three lottery booth drawings, of which Loterie, which remained in the artist's collection, was almost certainly one. The Mayor Gallery archive records the sale of seventeen of the twenty-seven fair drawings in February 1948. An 'ex-cat' collage was bought direct from Paolozzi by Colin St John ('Sandy') Wilson, then an architectural student, in unusual circumstances which Wilson described in the Pallant House Gallery catalogue; the encounter inaugurated a lifelong friendship. However, none of the three lottery booth drawings in the exhibition appear to have sold, perhaps because their starker geometry, strangely prescient of Jasper Johns's 'Target' series of the next decade, were too abstract for contemporary taste.
We are very grateful to Robin Spencer for preparing this catalogue entry.