Lot 264
£30,200
Auction: 28 October 2022 from 10:00 BST
beech, birch plywood, rope, linen, nylon cord, hammer, metal hooks and nails, together with the handmade wooden maquette, with miniature Christmas cracker plastic tools, contained within a panelled wooden box
Provenance:
Collection of Zeev Aram, London.
"It is a chair, it is a toolbox, I made it from orange crates. The backrest hangs on the wall to make shelves. The boxes pull out for a bed." Eduardo Paolozzi
Sculptor’s Chair, created from shipping crates salvaged from the back of the Aram Design store in London, is a significant example of one of the founders of British Pop Art’s use of found objects and collage, elements that had been continuously present in Paolozzi's work since the 1940s.
Paolozzi drew his own observations in the catalogue for the show that celebrated the 23rd anniversary exhibition of Aram Designs in 1987, where Zeev Aram had commissioned various designs by the likes of Peter Blake, Allen Jones, Norman Foster and Jasper Morrison:
“A room without furniture, an empty house, a desert island – starting from scratch with a few packing cases.
In any of these situations the sculptor, after a lifetime of improvising, will reach for his tools. They are contained in a shallow box with a linen hinge and a rope handle. Another box contains the essentials of life – soap & salt, a towel and two mugs. To hand these minimal items on the wall a grill is made with the same dimension as the boxes.
The grill also acts as a backrest for the boxes now transformed into a chair. Being geometric these boxes may evolve into a bed or, with additions stack to become a major storage unit.
Like the raw material itself, each part has a strength and individual identity and peculiar honesty, like Shaker furniture. Using basic box wood, an improvised look with the woodwork bearing the stamps of its travels or provenance, one is reminded of early still life constructions of Picasso or Rodchenko.” (Eduardo Paolozzi)
In his use of found objects Paolozzi's Sculptor’s Chair is a reaction to the branding, advertising and mass-market consumerism prevalent at the time and is suggestive of a simpler existence.