- Museum number
- 1985,1005.16
- Title
- Object: Man's head
- Description
-
Abstract head composed of dots and dashes. 1952
Colour lithograph, printed in blue and green
- Production date
- 1952
- Dimensions
-
Height: 510 millimetres
-
Width: 390 millimetres (approx)
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Text from Frances Carey & Antony Griffiths, 'Avant-garde British Printmaking 1914-1960', BMP, 1990, no.225.
Paolozzi's first prints were two lithographs, 'Marine Composition' and 'Design' (or 'Composition') commissioned by Miller's and published in 1950 and 1951 respectively. This print, 'Man's Head', followed in 1952, but was published directly by the Redfern Gallery, which included it in their exhibition of English lithographs in November (no. 162). All three lithographs were done on transfer paper, which Paolozzi recalls finding rather difficult to use (in conversation with the authors, 19 February 1990). Robert MacBryde apparently acted as an intermediary between the Redfern and the artist in the case of 'Man's Head' and brought the transfer paper round to Paolozzi with a view to instructing him in the technique. Paolozzi received 12 guineas for the commission and the print itself was initially advertised at 4 guineas in 1952, rising to 10 guineas by 1957 in the Redfern catalogues.
Paolozzi had produced a number of plaster heads in 1950 with 'drawn' surfaces covered in the same calligraphic elements of which the head in the lithograph is composed. The pictographic quality of the image also reflects the teaching and practice of Paul Klee, whose work exerted such a pervasive influence on the British avant-garde of all stylistic persuasions during the postwar period (a good account of this is given in David Thistlewood's essay 'The Independent Group and Art Education in Britain, 1950-1965' in the ICA Independent Group catalogue, 1990, pp.213-20). It was Klee's eclecticism which particularly appealed to Paolozzi: "Consider for example the kind of world tapped by Paul Klee, which among other things, was the world of the ethnographic. He also drew on microbiology and memory traces, psychological matter and folk art" (Paolozzi, 'The Iconography of the Present', in the Arts Council catalogue, 1976, p.27).
'Man's Head' is similar in composition to the coelacanth portrayed in 'Marine Composition', 1950. The second of these early lithographs, however, 'Composition' of 1951, made use of more diverse elements, incorporating rubbings on transfer paper to create a variety of different textures.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1990/1 Sep-Jan, BM, 'Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914-1960', no.225
1991/2 Nov-Jan, Middlesborough AG, Avant-Garde British Printmaking
1992 Feb-April, Plymouth City Mus & AG, Avant-Garde British Printmaking
1992 May-June, Glasgow, Hunterian AG, Avant-Garde British Printmaking
1992 Oct-Dec, Manchester, Whitworth AG, Avant-Garde British Printmaking
- Acquisition date
- 1985
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1985,1005.16