Paolozzi, Sir Eduardo Luigi

▪ 2006

      British artist (b. March 7, 1924, Leith, Scot.—d. April 22, 2005, London, Eng.), helped launch the British Pop art movement with a series of collages based on mass-media images and later became one of England's leading sculptors. Paolozzi studied art in Edinburgh and London, and in 1947 he moved to Paris, where he became immersed in Surrealism and Dada. During this time he began to craft his landmark collages, in which he juxtaposed magazine photographs, advertisements, and scientific illustrations. Returning to London in 1949, he became a member of the Independent Group, an association of artists who eschewed Modernism. At one of the group's meetings in 1952, he featured the collages in a slide show for his lecture entitled “Bunk.” The event laid the foundations for the British Pop art movement. In the early 1960s Paolozzi began to craft colourful robotlike sculptures that expressed his interest in machinery and science. Among his numerous public commissions was a monumental sculpture of English physicist Sir Isaac Newton (1997) at the British Library. Paolozzi also produced abstract screen prints—most notably the series As Is When (1965), inspired by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and considered a leading example of Pop art—and taught at a number of schools. He was knighted in 1989.

* * *