Paolozzi, Eduardo (Sir)

About the artist

Name

Biography

Sir Eduardo Paolozzi was born 7 March 1924, in Leith in north Edinburgh, Scotland and was the eldest son of Italian immigrants. In June 1940, when Italy declared war on Britain, Paolozzi was interned (along with most other Italian men in Britain). During his three-month internment at Saughton prison his father, grandfather and uncle, who had also been detained, were among the 446 Italians who drowned when the ship carrying them to Canada, the Arandora Star, was sunk by a German U-boat.[

Paolozzi studied at the Edinburgh College of Art in 1943, briefly at the St Martin's School of Art in 1944, and then at the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London from 1944 to 1947, after which he worked in Paris, France. While in Paris from 1947-1949.

Paolozzi was a founder of the Independent Group in 1952, which is regarded as the precursor to the mid 1950s British and late 1950s American Pop Art movements. His seminal 1947 collage I was a Rich Man's Plaything is considered the earliest standard bearer representing Pop Art.

Paolozzi was awarded the CBE in 1968 and in 1979 he was elected to the Royal Academy. During the late 60s he started contributing to literary magazine Ambit, which began a lifelong collaboration.

He was promoted to the office of Her Majesty's Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1986, which he held until his death. Paolozzi was knighted in 1989 by Queen Elizabeth II and awarded the KBE
In 1994 Paolozzi gave the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art a large body of his works, and much of the content of his artist's studio.
In 1999 the National Galleries of Scotland opened the Dean Gallery to display this collection, and the gallery displays a recreation of Paolozzi's studio, with its contents evoking the original London and Munich locations

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