Painter and sculptor, Eduardo Paolozzi was born to Italian immigrant parents in Leith, Scotland in 1924. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art and the Slade School of Art, holding his first exhibition at London's Mayor Gallery in 1947. A pioneer of the Pop Art movement in the UK, his work explores the relationship between machine and the body, reflecting his interest in popular and commercial culture.
Painter, sculptor and teacher, Eduardo Paolozzi was born in Leith, Scotland to Italian immigrant parents in 1924. His father was an admirer of Italy's Benito Mussolini and sent his son, from the age of nine, to Fascist summer camps on the Adriatic coast. Paolozzi later recalled it as an experience which reconnected him with his roots: 'it gave one an awareness that it was two cultures to live in simultaneously as a child, and it made one enormously self-sufficient in a bizarre way' (Whitford 1994, p. 6). As a child he collected ephemera: science-fiction magazines, discarded toys, and other objets trouvés – which became the basis for a lifelong fascination with incorporating found objects and images in his art. When Italy joined the Second World War in 1940, he was interned alongside his male relatives in Saughton Prison, Edinburgh; his father and grandfather were to be transported to Canada, but during the Atlantic crossing a German U-Boat torpedoed their ship and they tragically drowned. Following his release, Paolozzi studied at Edinburgh College of Art before being conscripted into the army. He feigned insanity in order to be discharged earlier and enrolled at the Slade School of Art, temporarily evacuated to Oxford, where he studied for the duration of the war. His first solo show, featuring primitivist sculpture and Cubist-inspired collage, was held at London's Mayor Gallery in 1947. It was a resounding success, with all artworks sold. Later that year, Paolozzi moved to Paris, where he mixed with Surrealist artists, including Alberto Giacometti and Georges Braque, and produced various Surrealist sculptures reflecting his fascination with modern machinery. Returning to London in 1949, he started to teach at the Central School of Art and Design and established a studio in Chelsea, sharing a space first with Lucian Freud and then with William Turnbull. Together with his friend, experimental photographer Nigel Henderson, Paolozzi set up a company specialising in silk-screened textiles and wallpaper. This enterprise brought him the financial security that allowed him to rent a studio in London. During the 1950s, Paolozzi created sculptures that explored the human form and the relationship between the machine and the body.
In 1952 Paolozzi was a co-founder of the Independent Group (IG), a radical collection of young artists, writers and critics who met at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) and challenged the modernist (and elitist, as they perceived it) culture dominant at that time, in order to make it more inclusive of popular culture. In the same year, he presented his lecture ‘Bunk’, depicting images from contemporary culture and science-fiction literature, which signalled the emergence of Pop Art, as well as his pioneering role within the movement. In particular, his collage ˂em˃I Was a Rich Man's Plaything˂/em˃ (1947, Tate) became an iconic image for the future adherents of British Pop. In 1956 Paolozzi collaborated with members of the IG in the groundbreaking ˂em˃This is Tomorrow ˂/em˃ exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, which reflected the group's interest in popular and commercial culture. From 1955–56 Paolozzi taught sculpture at St Martin's School of Art, and afterwards developed a process of making sculpture which he called 'the metamorphosis of rubbish'. He assembled mechanical objects in his studio and pressed them together in soft clay. The impressions left in the clay were then filled with wax, which he later modelled by hand. The final image was cast in bronze. The sculptures, some larger than life, were characterised by a mechanized look, whilst others assumed a mythological or religious identity. His ‘robotic’ sculpture was shown in London at the Hanover Gallery (1958), as well as in New York and Venice.
During the 1960s Paolozzi produced sculpture informed by German architecture and expressionist cinema, as well as As Is When, a set of ten screenprints based on the life and philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, considered a ‘a milestone in the history of screenprinting’ (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). In 1968 Paolozzi was awarded a CBE, and became tutor in ceramics at the Royal College of Art (RCA), a post he held until 1989. In 1972 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Arts (RA). He also taught in Cologne and Munich between 1981 and 1994. He received many public commissions in Germany and England, including mural mosaics for London's Tottenham Court Road underground station, and his 12-foot high bronze of Sir Isaac Newton in the piazza of the new British Library (1995). In 1989 he was knighted by HRH Queen Elizabeth II. In 1994 he donated a large body of his works to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Eduardo Paolozzi died in London, England on 22 April 2005. His work is held in many UK public collections, including Tate; National Museums Scotland; Arts Council; British Council; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The British Library sound archive holds a recording of his Life Story (1994).
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Eduardo Paolozzi]
Publications related to [Eduardo Paolozzi] in the Ben Uri Library