Eduardo Paolozzi

For Leonardo (1986). Alte Pinakothek sculpture park , Munich

Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi KBE RA (born March 7, 1924 in Leith ( Edinburgh ), † April 22, 2005 in London ) was a Scottish graphic artist and sculptor. He had a major impact on British Pop Art .

Life

Paolozzi was born in Scotland to Italian immigrants. In June 1940, when Italy declared war on Great Britain, he - like most other Italian men - was interned as an " enemy alien ".

In 1943 Paolozzi went to the College of Art in his hometown . In 1944 he began studying at St Martin's School of Art, and from 1945 to 1947 he attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London . In 1947 Paolozzi moved to Paris for two years , where he briefly enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and met artists such as Arp, Brancusi, Giacometti, Léger and Dubuffet.

Back in London , he taught textile design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1949 and then sculpture at Martin's School of Art from 1955 to 1958 .

In 1952 he became a member of the Independent Group , an association of young pop art artists .

Paolozzi had his first solo exhibition in 1947 at the Mayor Gallery, London. Eduardo Paolozzi participated in documenta II (1959), documenta III (1964), 4th documenta (1968) and also documenta 6 in 1977 in Kassel . He represented Great Britain at the XXX. 1960 Venice Biennale , where he won the David E. Bright Prize for the best artist under 45 years of age. In 1968 the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf showed his sculptures and graphics in a solo exhibition. The Yorkshire Sculpture Park dedicated a large exhibition to Eduardo Paolozzi in 1994 on the occasion of his 70th birthday.

Paolozzi also taught at German universities. Between 1960 and 1962 he was a visiting professor at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts . In 1977 he was appointed to the chair for ceramics at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences - Department of Art and Design - ( Kölner Werkschulen ). In 1981 Paolozzi moved to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich , where he taught until his retirement in 1989.

Paolozzi was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1979 , a Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1986 and a Knight Commander in 1989 by Queen Elizabeth II .

In 1994 Paolozzi gave the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art much of his work and the furnishings of his artist's studio. The Scottish National Gallery then opened the Dean Gallery , Edinburgh , in 1999 , showing this collection and a replica of his studio.

In 2001, Paolozzi suffered an almost fatal stroke , and as a result he was dependent on a wheelchair. He died in April 2005 in a London hospital.

plant

Paolozzi's work is strongly influenced by his interest in the mass media, he was interested in everyday objects and especially kitsch. Paolozzi developed - as an immigrant free of "English" traditions - a unique style which, in extension of surrealist ideas, includes short-lived concerns of daily life. He used a wide range of materials for his work. In his early sculptures, many of them made of aluminum, assemblages of scrap materials, collected in the junkyard, took on humanoid forms that later developed into shiny, robot-like shapes.

He later created complex mechanistic fantasy scenarios that pay homage to the scientific development and industrial technology of the post-war period. A sculpture in Yorkshire Sculpture Park was dedicated to children as a playground; the vocabulary of forms should appeal to the children's imagination and encourage them to climb and play hide and seek. The garden architecture fountain system oT (1989) in Munich and the fountain environment in Rheingarten, Cologne, have a similar character.

In the sixties and seventies, Paolozzi u. a. also several illustrations from books by the German doctor and non-fiction author Fritz Kahn (1888–1968) and artistically processed his man-machine analogies, e.g. B. with the screen print "Wittgenstein in New York" (1965), the print series "Secrets of Life - The Human Machine and How it Works" (1970) or for the design of the book title "Lost in the Funhouse" (Penguin, 1972 ). The siblings Uta von Debschitz and Thilo von Debschitz made this accidental discovery during their research into the life and work of Fritz Kahn.

Paolozzi's best-known works include the cover of Paul McCartney's album Red Rose Speedway (1973) and the color mosaics on Tottenham Court Road Underground Station in London (1983-85). His homage to Anton Bruckner is in the Danube Park Linz . Three works in Munich alone bear witness to his time in Munich: For Leonardo (1986), Eisenguss, in the sculpture park of the Pinakotheken; a fountain system oT (1989) made of bronze and granite and Camera (1978/79), cast iron, in front of the European Patent Office. Paolozzi developed many of his works and concepts in his Munich studio.

gallery

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  Mosaic (1983-85) in Tottenham Court Road Underground Station, London (detail)

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  Rheingartenbrunnen (1984–1986), Cologne

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  Akropolis (1990), Steel Symposium Dillingen / Saar

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  Newton (1995), in the courtyard of the British Library, London

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  Head of Invention (2007), in front of the Design Museum , London

Web links

Commons : Eduardo Paolozzi  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Eduardo Paolozzi in the catalog of the German National Library
• ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: The Bunk collages of Eduardo Paolozzi by John-Paul Stonard (in English) )
• Materials by and about Eduardo Paolozzi in the documenta archive

Individual evidence

1. ^ Cass Sculpture Foundation
2. ↑ Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, RA in the database of the Royal Academy of Arts , English, accessed on May 24, 2013.
3. ↑ Access Sculpture Trail ( Yorkshire Sculpture Park )
4. ↑ Paolozzi in Yorkshire Sculpture Park ( Memento of the original of October 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , English, accessed May 24, 2013.