Eduardo Paolozzi

Eduardo Paolozzi was born in Leith 80 years ago. He spoke Scots in the playground and Italian at home, and spent long hours working in his father’s sweet shop on Albert Street. His early fascination with colourful sweetie wrappers was a sign of things to come, as was his love for model aeroplanes.

1940 was a bad time for Italians in Britain, and Paolozzi’s father, grandfather and uncle were all arrested, exiled, and lost at sea because of the war. Paolozzi, only 16, was jailed in Saughton for three months. A year later he enrolled for evening classes at Edinburgh College of Art, and since then his commitment to art has never wavered.

In the last 60 years Paolozzi has paved the way for Pop Art, created public sculptures all over Europe, been compared in stature with Giacometti, and continued to pursue a unique vision which combines radical innovation with deeply-rooted Scottish philosophical traditions.

From as early as the 1940s, Paolozzi was way ahead of his peers in combining “high” and “low” art. A scrap torn from a fashion magazine or a diagram of a jet engine sits alongside a Michelangelo reproduction in his scrap books and in his art. His cluttered studio, restaged in Edinburgh’s Dean Gallery, is a treasure trove of Star Wars toys, fragmented casts of classical sculpture and stacks of yellowed National Geographics. The sweetie wrappers of his youth are probably in there somewhere too.

Collage is central to Paolozzi’s approach. The artist has taken the Surrealist technique deep into his practice, fragmenting and recombining scraps of paper and chunks of bronze in unexpected ways. Most consistently, Paolozzi combines the mechanical with the human. It’s as if his lumbering giants (usually bearing more than a passing resemblance to himself) have been dismantled, thrown in a heap with the bits of a robot, and reassembled by a mad scientist.

The best known of these in Edinburgh is The Manuscript of Monte Cassino, at the top of Leith Walk. The giant foot, ankle and hand are a tribute to Paolozzi’s Italian roots, while his more recent commission at the South Gyle, in commemoration of Scots economist Adam Smith, comprises hands, feet and head. At the Dean Gallery, the artist’s massive steel-plated Vulcan towers two storeys high. The building itself was gifted to the National Galleries in order to house their vast Paolozzi collection.

In Glasgow the Hunterian boasts a large set of aluminium doors by Paolozzi, while in London the artist’s work graces Tottenham Court Road, Euston Station, The British Library, and High Holborn. His sculptures and even two children’s playgrounds have been made for major sites throughout Germany, where the artist’s reputation is enormous.

Paolozzi is a self-confessed workaholic, often known to sleep in his studio. Three years ago he collapsed in his London studio and his recovery has been painfully slow. Although he is still weak, it has been reported that he intends to make an appearance at the opening of his exhibition this Friday.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 23.05.04