Sir Eduardo Paolozzi; Scotsman obit
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WHOSE INFLUENCE SPANNED THE WORLD
BYLINE: Tim Cornwell, Arts Correspondent
ARTIST Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, the son of a Leith sweet shop
owner who rose to become one of the biggest figures in
post-war British art, died yesterday morning, aged 81.
The sculptor, who had been confined to a wheelchair since an
illness that left him brain damaged four years ago, passed
away in a London hospital.
Widely acknowledged as the figurehead of the British Pop Art
movement, he was yesterday hailed as the "greatest artistic
genius of our generation in Scotland".
Fellow artist Richard Demarco said: "It is the loss of a
father figure for the Italian community. Someone who proved
that your destiny was not, inevitably, to be involved in the
catering trade."
Paolozzi moved beyond Pop Art to become a richly varied
sculptor and painter, and a major figure on the
international art scene. He exhibited and carried off awards
from Europe to the US and Japan, was made a member of the
Royal Academy in 1979 and knighted in 1988. However, he
stayed loyal to his Scottish roots long after he moved away.
He was remembered yesterday as an artist whose work ranged
from paper collages to stained glass to monumental metal
sculptures inspired by the machine age, drawing on
influences from classical Greek art to cartoons.
Sir Timothy Clifford, the director general of the National
Galleries of Scotland, said yesterday: "He is the most
varied and one of the most distinguished artists that has
ever come out of Scotland. I think he is the greatest
artistic genius of our generation in Scotland."
The galleries hold the world's major collection of his work,
thanks to gifts from Paolozzi and his patrons. He literally
left his mark on Edinburgh with a series of public artworks
throughout the city.
Mr Demarco, another Scots Italian, recalled being shown the
young Paolozzi's drawings when he followed in his footsteps
at Holy Cross Academy in 1943. "The art mistress told me she
expected a great deal of me as an Italian Scot so I could
follow in the footsteps of her favourite pupils," he said.
"It is the end of an era."
Paolozzi's sister still lives in Leith, and he returned to
the city regularly to visit her.
He is survived by three daughters, of whom Emma nursed him
in his final years. Four days ago he paid a private visit to
a major retrospective of his work at the Flowers East
Gallery in Shoreditch, east London. A gallery spokesman
said: "He came with his daughter and spent 45 minutes here,
and he enjoyed the show immensely. We were thrilled he came.
We are very saddened to hear of his death."
In February he received an honorary degree from Edinburgh
University in a ceremony at the Royal College of Art in
London.
Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi was born in Crowne Place, Leith Walk,
on 7 March, 1924, to Italian immigrant parents who ran an
ice cream and sweet shop.
During the Second World War, the shop was looted and
Paolozzi briefly interned, but a greater tragedy followed.
His father and grandfather were shipped to Canada for
internment, but drowned when their transport ship, SS
Arandora Star, was sunk by German U-boats.
Paolozzi would later commemorate Italians' involvement in
the war in his sculpture, The Manuscript of Monte Cassino,
outside St Mary's Catholic Cathedral at the top of Leith
Walk.
In 1943 Paolozzi became a full-time student at the Edinburgh
College of Art. He went on to study in London before moving
to Paris after the war. Influences on his early work ranged
from Picasso, to his friend the sculptor Giacometti, to
Surrealism.
By the late 1940s, Paolozzi was showing collages cut from
the pages of American glossy magazines. It was this use of
images from consumer culture, celebrated in his famous 1954
lecture, Bunk!, that is seen as a foundation of Pop Art.
During the 1950s and 1960s he developed his interest in
sculpture with work inspired by industrial machinery. In the
1970s he began working with abstract screenprinting, while
his split head sculptures would also become a trademark.
Sir Angus Grossart, the banker and businessman, was a patron
and close friend of Paolozzi. He recalled how he roved
charity shops for objects of all kinds, from toys and model
kits to plaster casts and mechanical parts.
"He saw beauty and creative opportunity in the most unlikely
objects," Sir Angus said. "That was why he could work in so
many different mediums, from stained glass to ceramics to
bits of paper and mosaic, sculpture, or prints. That is a
measure of his genius, and that he had in common with the
stars of the Renaissance."
Paolozzi's most famous public works in Britain include a
series of mosaics at Tottenham Court Road underground
station in London and the statue of Sir Isaac Newton in the
piazza of the British Library. His bust of John Smith, the
former Labour leader, was commissioned for the House of
Commons.
In Edinburgh, his work ranges from the monumental sculpture
The Wealth of Nations, for the Royal Bank of Scotland
building at South Gyle, to the stained glass windows in St
Mary's Episcopal Cathedral.
But his illness left one major work unfinished, a pair of
doors planned for the west entrance to St Giles' Cathedral
on the Royal Mile.
"There were sketches and part of a model, it was 80% done,
but it was not possible to see how he would finally have
pulled it together," Sir Angus said.
The National Galleries of Scotland's collection of his work
ranges from collages to bronzes to a reconstructed studio at
the Dean Gallery. Last year, the gallery held a major
retrospective, "Paolozzi at 80".
Sir Timothy said Scottish art was often identified with
mountains, lochs, the weather and flora and fauna. Paolozzi,
by contrast, reached for the art of the machine age. "This
is a man of enormous breadth and he has huge breadth of
intellect," he said. "He was extremely well read, he was an
opera buff, he read the classics, he was interested in
philosophy. He was a self-made genius."
Duncan Macmillan, The Scotsman's art critic, said Paolozzi
shared the international standing of another Scottish
artist, sculptor Ian Hamilton Findlay. "They are the same
age and both tremendously important in Europe and
internationally," Mr Macmillan said.
In 1971, an early Paolozzi patron and friend, Michael Spens,
commissioned him to produce ceiling reliefs for Cleish
Castle, near Kinross, which Mr Spens then owned. It was a
major turning point for the artist. The panels are now in
the Dean Gallery.
"He suffered from being pigeonholed as Scottish," Mr Spens
said. "That remains something of a sadness. He came from
very simple origins in Edinburgh. He kept coming back and
his commitment remained unswervingly to Scotland."
Indeed, while Paolozzi had a one-man show at the Tate
Gallery in London in 1971, he was probably better known in
Germany, where he taught extensively, than in England.
Sir Tom Farmer, the Edinburgh businessman, recalled how
Paolozzi invited him to London for a day to explain his art.
"He was the first person that gave me an understanding that
there was more to art than just looking at a pretty picture,
that you had to appreciate it, and look behind it and how it
was arrived at," said Sir Tom.
"He was a man with an extremely good sense of humour, and he
made art out of nonsense, without trying to play it down in
any way."
Malcolm McLeod, the vice-principal of Glasgow University,
was curator of an exhibition of Paolozzi's work at the
Museum of Mankind in London. It put his work alongside
antique materials, masks and tools from Africa and North
America.
"He had an interest in everything and he didn't like all the
normal categories," said Mr McLeod. "It's not Scottish art,
it's European art, it's world art. He was a major figure,
undoubtedly, he was a gigantic figure."