In the later 1940s in collages indebted to ethnography and surrealism, Paolozzi constructed a new post-war vision of man based on an assault on his self-imaging: In Fairground Motif (October 1947), a surrogate figuration suggestive of African nail-riven fetishes replaces civilisation with savagery.

Paolozzi later recalled the influences behind Fairground Motif: 'it was part of a series of images inspired by French playgrounds. I spent my first summer in Paris after the Slade in a large wooden studio at Denfert-Rochereau where there seemed to be a permanent summer fairground, and lots of shooting booths [also] I used to draw that summer at the Musée de l'Homme.' Eduardo Paolozzi, letter to James Hyman, 14 June 1994