Sir Eduardo Paolozzi | |
|---|---|
 Paolozzi's 1995Newton followsWilliam Blake's 1795 printNewton in illustrating a world thought to be determined by mathematical laws. | |
| Born | 7 March 1924 (1924-03-07) |
| Died | 22 April 2005 (2005-04-23) (aged 81) London, England |
| Education | Edinburgh College of Art,University of Edinburgh Slade School of Fine Art,UCL |
| Known for | Sculpture,art |
| Movement | Pop art |
Sir Eduardo Luigi PaolozziCBE RA (/paʊˈlɒtsi/,[1][2]Italian:[paoˈlɔttsi]; 7 March 1924 – 22 April 2005) was a Scottish artist, known for his sculpture and graphic works. He is widely considered to be one of the pioneers ofpop art.
Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi was born on 7 March, 1924, inLeith,Edinburgh,Scotland, and was the eldest son of Italian immigrants.[3] His family was fromViticuso, in theLazio region. Paolozzi's parents, Rodolfo and Carmela, ran an ice cream shop. Paolozzi used to spend all his summers at his grandparents place inMonte Cassino and grew up bilingual.[4] In June 1940, when Italy declared war on the United Kingdom, Paolozzi wasinterned (along with most other Italian men in Britain). During his three-month internment atSaughton prison his father, grandfather and uncle, who had also been detained, were among the 446 Italians who drowned when the ship carrying them to Canada, theArandora Star, was sunk by aGerman U-boat.[5]
Paolozzi studied at theEdinburgh College of Art in 1943, briefly atSaint Martin's School of Art in 1944, and then at theSlade School of Fine Art atUniversity College London from 1944 to 1947, after which he worked inParis. While in Paris from 1947 to 1949, Paolozzi became acquainted withAlberto Giacometti,Jean Arp,Constantin Brâncuși,Georges Braque andFernand Léger. This period became an important influence for his later work.[6] For example, the influence of Giacometti and many of the original Surrealists he met in Paris can be felt in the group of lost-wax sculptures made by Paolozzi in the mid-1950s. Their surfaces, studded with found objects and machine parts, were to gain him recognition.[7]
After Paris, he moved back to London eventually establishing his studio inChelsea. The studio was a workshop filled with hundreds of found objects, models, sculptures, materials, tools, toys and stacks of books.[8] Paolozzi was interested in everything and would use a variety of objects and materials in his work, particularly hiscollages.[9] In 1955 he moved with his family to the village ofThorpe-le-Soken inEssex. Together withNigel Henderson he establishedHammer Prints Limited, a design company producing wallpapers, textiles and ceramics that were initially manufactured atLandermere Wharf, and when his evening course in printed textile design at the Central School of Art and Design attracted theTrinidadian graphics studentAlthea McNish, he was instrumental in pointing her towards her future career as a textile designer. Paolozzi came to public attention in the 1950s by producing a range of strikingscreenprints andArt brut sculpture. He was a founder of theIndependent Group in 1952, which is regarded as the precursor to the mid-1950s British and late 1950s AmericanPop Art movements. His seminal 1947 collageI was a Rich Man's Plaything is considered the earliest standard bearer representing Pop Art.[10][11][12] He always described his work as surrealist art and, while working in a wide range of media though his career, became more closely associated with sculpture. Paolozzi is recognized for producing largely lifelike statuary works, but with rectilinear (often cubic) elements added or removed, or the human form deconstructed in acubist manner.
He taught sculpture and ceramics at several institutions, including theHochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (1960–62),[13]University of California, Berkeley (in 1968) and at theRoyal College of Art. Paolozzi had a long association with Germany, having worked inBerlin from 1974 as part of the Berlin Artist Programme of the German Academic Exchange Programme. He was a professor at theFachhochschule inCologne from 1977 to 1981, and later taught sculpture at theAkademie der Bildenden Künste inMunich. Paolozzi was fond of Munich and many of his works and concept plans were developed in a studio he kept there, including the mosaics of the Tottenham Court Road Station in London.[9] He took a stab at industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of the upscaleSuomi tableware byTimo Sarpaneva that Paolozzi decorated for the German Rosenthalporcelain maker'sStudio Linie.[14]
Paolozzi's graphic work of the 1960s was highly innovative. In a series of works he explored and extended the possibilities and limits of the silkscreen medium. The resulting prints are characterised by Pop culture references and technological imagery. These series are:As Is When (12 prints on the theme of Paolozzi's interest in the philosopherLudwig Wittgenstein; published as a limited edition of 65 by Editions Alecto, 1965);Moonstrips Empire News (100 prints, eight signed, in an acrylic box; published as a limited edition of 500 by Editions Alecto, 1967);Universal Electronic Vacuu (10 prints, poster and text; published by Paolozzi as a limited edition of 75, 1967);General Dynamic Fun. (part 2 ofMoonstrips Empire News; 50 sheets plus title sheet; boxed in five versions; published as a limited edition of 350 by Editions Alecto, 1970).
In the 1960s and 1970s, Paolozzi artistically processed man-machine images from popular science books by German doctor and authorFritz Kahn (1888–1968), such as in his screenprint "Wittgenstein in New York" (1965), the print seriesSecrets of Life – The Human Machine and How it Works (1970), or the cover design forJohn Barth's novelLost in the Funhouse (Penguin, 1972). As recently as 2009, the reference to Kahn was discovered by Uta and Thilo von Debschitz during their research of work and life of Fritz Kahn.[15]
Paolozzi was appointedCBE in 1968[16] and in 1979 he was elected to theRoyal Academy. In 1967, he started contributing to literary magazineAmbit, which began a lifelong collaboration.
In 1980, theInstitute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) commissioned a set of three tapestries from Paolozzi to represent 'present day and future societies in relation to the role played by ICAEW', as part of the institute's centenary celebrations. The three highly distinctive pieces – which Paolozzi wanted to"depict our world of today in a manner using the same bold pictorial style as the Bayeux tapestries in France" – currently hang inChartered Accountants' Hall.[17]
He was promoted to the office ofHer Majesty's Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1986, which he held until his death. He also received anHonorary Doctorate fromHeriot-Watt University in 1987.[18]
Paolozzi wasknighted byQueen Elizabeth II in 1989 as Knight Bachelor (Kt).[19]
In 1994, Paolozzi gave theScottish National Gallery of Modern Art a large body of his works, and much of the content of his studio. In 1999 theNational Galleries of Scotland opened theDean Gallery to display this collection. The gallery displays a recreation of Paolozzi's studio, with its contents evoking the original London and Munich locations and also houses a Scottish-Italian restaurant, Paolozzi's Kitchen, which was created by Heritage Portfolio in homage to the local artist.[8]
In 2001, Paolozzi suffered a near-fatalstroke, causing anincorrect magazine report that he had died. The illness made him a wheelchair user, and he died in a hospital in London in April 2005.[20]
In 2013,Pallant House Gallery inChichester held a major retrospectiveEduardo Paolozzi: Collaging Culture (6 July −13 October 2013), featuring more than 100 of the artist's works, including sculpture, drawings, textile, film, ceramics andpaper collage. Pallant House Gallery has an extensive collection of Paolozzi's work given and loaned by the architectColin St John Wilson, who commissioned Paolozzi's sculptureNewton After Blake for theBritish Library.
.jpg)
_in_the_Scottish_National_Gallery_Of_Modern_Art.jpg)
{{cite book}}:|website= ignored (help)
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
