Sculptor and pop art founder Eduardo Paolozzi.
Mackay Woodfin
Friday April 22, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk
Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, one of the most influential British sculptors of
the 20th century, has died in a nursing home aged 81. He had been
confined to a wheelchair since a serious illness four years ago left
him brain damaged.
Paolozzi was regarded as one of the founders of the British pop art
movement. He first captured public attention with a range of vibrant
and striking screenprints, and was a leading member of the Independent
Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, a radical group
of artists who pioneered British pop art in the 50s and early 60s.
Latterly he became better known as a sculptor, and his huge public
works, largely lifelike statues often with cubic elements, brought him
international fame and commissions. Some of his best known sculptures
today include The Statue of Newton (after William Blake), 1995, in the
piazza of the new British Library, the mosaic patterned walls of
Tottenham Court Road tube station and the Piscator sculpture outside
London's Euston station.
Born in Leith in 1924, Paolozzi's parents were Italian immigrants who
ran a sweet shop. It was here that the young artist's instincts for
collecting curiosities were first aroused, and he amassed a huge
collection of cigarette cards and matchboxes.
He studied at Edinburgh College of Art and London's Slade school. A
spell studying in Paris brought him under the influence of surrealism
and dada. He was one of the first British artists to take on board Pop
Art sensibilities from the United States. "He had a serious claim to be
the first pop artist, making collages featuring pin-up girls and modern
kitchens in the 1940s," said Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones.
Paolozzi always said that he worked instinctively, and was an
evangelist for increasing access to art and sculpture. "If it
[sculpture] is out in a railway siding or it's stuck under your nose
for the ordinary commuter who might not otherwise go to a sculpture
park they can't miss it," he once said. He was a prolific sculptor:
some of his many public commissions can be seen inside the Queen
Elizabeth II conference centre, in the courtyard of the Royal Academy,
outside the British museum and the Science museum. He created the
cast-aluminum doors at Glasgow's Hunterian gallery.
At the time of his collapse in 2000 he was working on a number of
projects including set designs for a production of The Magic Flute, and
bronze doors and stained glass windows for St Giles cathedral and St
Mary's church, respectively, in Edinburgh.
Knighted in 1989, three years previously he was appointed Her Majesty's
Sculptor-in-Ordinary for Scotland. A permanent display of his work and
a reconstruction of his studio is housed in the Dean Gallery in
Edinburgh.
Paolozzi is survived by his three daughters and his former wife.
Tottenham Court Road tube station mosiacs
http://www.geocities.com/londondestruction/favemosaics.html
Paolozzi's Newton at The British Library.
http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/england/london/britlibrary/newton.jpg
William Blake's Newton
http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/reviews/cohen/cohen4-22-2b.asp
http://images.google.co.uk/images?q=paolozzi
*
An amazing amount of life given to such everyday matter. His work has a
immediate humanness, energy and animation which unfortunately is out of
expressive favour with the post ironic/conceptual vital public art 'n'
architecture I watched today.