In 1956 John Chamberlain moved to New York from Black Mountain College where he studied. Initially interested in painting, he started by making collages, which evolved into wall reliefs and from there to freestanding sculptures of automobile parts, the first of which he made in 1957 using an abandoned Ford that the artist Larry Rivers had given him. Chamberlain’s use of a material as common and readily available as scrap metal, with its connections to the real world, links his work with American Pop Art.