Paolozzi's
Newton, bronze (1995) in the courtyard of the British Library
Paolozzi follows William Blake's 1795 print
Newton in illustrating how Isaac Newton's equations changed our view of the world to being one determined by mathematical laws.
Professor Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi CBE FRA (March 7, 1924 – April 22, 2005), was a Scottish sculptor and artist. Paolozzi was born in Leith in north Edinburgh, the eldest son of Italian immigrants. He studied at the Edinburgh College of Art in 1943, briefly at the St Martin's School of Art in 1944, and then at the Slade School of Art in London from 1944 to 1947, after which he worked in Paris, France.
Largely a surrealist, Paolozzi came to public attention in the 1960s by producing a range of striking screenprints. Paolozzi was a founder of the Independent Group, which is seen as a precursor to the '60s British pop art movement. His 1947 collage I was a rich man's plaything [1], is sometimes labelled the first true instance of Pop Art, although he always described his work as surrealist. Latterly he became better known as a sculptor. Paolozzi is known for producing largely lifelike statuary works, but with rectilinear (often cubic) elements added or removed, or the human form deconstructed in a cubist manner.
His works include stuff like:
- The mosaic patterned walls of the Tottenham Court Road tube station
- The cover of Paul McCartney's album Red Rose Speedway
- The ceiling panels and window tapestry at Cleish Castle
- The "Piscator" sculpture outside Euston Station London
- Relief aluminium doors for the University of Glasgow's Hunterian Gallery
- Display cases in the Museum of Scotland
- The bronze sculpture Newton, after William Blake, 1995, in the piazza of the British Library
He taught sculpture and ceramics at a number of institutions, including University of California, Berkeley (in 1968) and at the Royal College of Art. Paolozzi has a long association with Germany, having worked in Berlin from 1974 as part of the Artists Exchange Scheme. He was a professor at the Fachhochschule in Cologne from 1977 to 1981, and later taught sculpture at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich.
Paolozzi was awarded the CBE in 1968 and in 1979 he was elected to the Royal Academy. He became the Her Majesty's Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1986, holding the office until his death. He became Sir Eduardo upon his knighthood in 1989.
In 1994 Paolozzi gave the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art a large body of his works, and much of the content of his artist's studio. In 1999 the National Galleries of Scotland opened the Dean Gallery to display this collection, and the gallery displays a recreation of Paolozzi's studio, with its contents evoking the original London and Munich locations.
In 2001 Paolozzi suffered a near-fatal stroke (causing an incorrect magazine report that he had died).
However illness confined him to a wheelchair, and he died in hospital in London in April 2005.
