As a child Panamarenko already showed an unusual interest in nature in general, and for the rare and appealing four-leaf clover in particular. Because his youthful search for the ‘unfindable’ type of clover was initially in vain, one day he asked his father discouragedly why those coveted green plants were so rare. The reply was brief and sobering: ‘Because they simply don’t exist!’. Disappointed, the child pushed his dream to one side and turned his attention to other matters...
Years later, in 1963, the young Panamarenko and a few of his associates went to the Antwerp refuse tip to search among the rubbish for parts that he could use in his works of art. It was there of all places that he found his first four-leaf clover! He was greatly relieved; the rare plant did exist after all. When his ‘botanical’ collection had grown to around a dozen exemplars in a few years, he made a small collage of them on a sheet of drawing paper that he sealed with transparent tape.
More than forty years later this poetic collage of small good luck charms is still in the artist’s possession. Although by now the paper is discoloured and the tape has hardened and yellowed, the collage still radiates the youthful freshness of the inquisitive young artist of the early 1960s. Although the collage is atypical for the whole of Panamarenko’s technical oeuvre that was to come later, it is all the more exemplary of its spirit.