| Admin_History | Eduardo Paolozzi was born in Leith, Edinburgh in 1924. A sculptor, draughtsman, designer, printmaker and teacher, he studied at Edinburgh College of Art in 1943 and then at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1944 - 1947. After army service he worked in Paris from 1947 - 1950, with his work being shown at the Galerie Maeght in 1948. His first one-man exhibition was at the Mayor Gallery in 1947. He was a founder of the Independent Group, considered a precursor to 1960s British Pop Art movement, though he always described his own works as surrealist. He used geometric patterns, and deconstructed the human form in a cubist manner, a reflection of his interest in modern machinery. He taught sculpture at St Martin's School from 1955 - 1958, ceramics at the Royal College of Art from 1968 - 1989 and at schools in Hamburg, Cologne and Munich. Paolozzi was also been represented at the Venice Biennale of 1952, the Sao Paolo Bienal of 1957, and Documenta, Kassel in 1959. He produced several films and books. He was the subject of a retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1971, was elected RA in 1979 and knighted in 1988. In 1994 he gifted a substantial body of his work to the SNGMA. Paolozzi died in 2005. |