JOHN BANTING (1902-1972)

The planned edition of one hundred was never completed. The British Museum records that the highest edition number found on a print from the series is 14/100, indicating that there were scarcely more than 14 impressions printed of each subject.

'John Banting was the first, and perhaps the only true Surrealist that this country produced. The blueprints that he made from 1931 onwards are extraordinary, both in their imagery and in their technique, which had nothing whatever to do with any tradition of printmaking in this country but was instead derived from Man Ray's photograms and Max Ernst's drawings.' (F. Carey & A. Griffiths, Avant-Garde British Printmaking 1914 - 1960, British Museum, London, 1990, p. 90).