Eduardo Paolozzi - John-Paul Stonard

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Eduardo Paolozzi



Eduardo Paolozzi Archaeology of a Used Future : Sculpture 1946 –1959

Texts by Peter Selz & John-Paul Stonard Photography by David Farrell

Jonathan Clark Fine Art in association with The Paolozzi Foundation



Foreword Simon Hucker

fig.1 Krokodeel 1956, bronze, h.36 in / 92 cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

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Eduardo Paolozzi : A Personal Recollection Peter Selz

I first encountered Paolozzi’s work when I saw his

Dubuffet’s paintings and sculptures as well as his

St. Sebastian No2 at the Guggenheim Museum in

art brut collection. The French artist’s use of old

1958. Here was this solitary figure, made of a

and discarded materials, the coarse surfaces of his

conglomeration of machine parts and all kinds of

pictures, his grotesques, were perhaps most

detritus, which the sculptor metamorphosed into a

important. In his Statement in the catalogue of New

tattered figure with a large encrusted head, a

Images, Dubuffet quoted Joseph Conrad speaking

ramshackle torso and thin legs. It appeared like a

of “a mixture of familiarity and terror” which

relic from the distant past and a robot of a perilous

certainly applies to Paolozzi’s bronzes. Although

future. Then I saw a show of small bronzes by this

entitled with heroic names such as Sebastian, Jason,

sculptor at Betty Parsons, the prime gallery of the

Icarus, Japanese War God, Cyclops, they are clearly

new American painting. I was selecting work for my

20th century existential anti-heroes, expressing the

forthcoming exhibition New Images of Man at the

human predicament. In the introduction to the

Museum of Modern Art at that time and decided

catalogue of New Images, I spoke of an art produced

that this Italian-Scottish artist had to be in the

by painters and sculptors working in the aftermath

show. The core artists of that international

of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, being acutely aware of

exhibition of the New Figuration were Giacometti,

what Nietzsche called “the eternal wounds of

Dubuffet, de Kooning, Pollock (the late black-white

existence.”

figurative paintings), Bacon, and among younger artists Leon Golub, Richard Diebenkorn, Karel

The exhibition at MoMA , the high altar of

Appel, César, Nathan Oliveira and H.C.

modernism, caused mixed reactions. To see it, was

Westermann.

basically a tragic experience. Furthermore, it was an international show at a time when the Museum’s

It was during a 3 year stay in Paris in the late 1940s

International Council, with unrevealed support

that Paolozzi met Braque and Balthus, came in

from federal agencies, supported the exhibitions of

contact with the Surrealists, saw Mary Reynolds’

the Abstract Expressionists as signifiers of

collection of leftover relics by Duchamp, admired

American freedom: The Triumph of American

the “presence” of Giacometti’s tall figures and

Painting as the American art critic Irving Sandler

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would arrogantly entitle his 1976 book on the

department at the university, he would address me

movement. A few years after the show, in 1964,

in his commanding voice, telling me that industrial

when Robert Rauschenberg was given the first

processes and techniques must be brought in,

prize at the Venice Biennale, the French critic

instead of old-fashioned academic teaching. When

Pierre Restany, usually supportive of American art,

I responded that the Bauhaus had gone in that

protested at “ the aura of cultural imperialism

direction, he replied that it was about time for this

around the Americans”.¹ In this xenophobic

to happen here.

atmosphere major European sculptors like Paolozzi or Eduardo Chillida did not receive the attention

In his own work at the time, Paolozzi was occupied

they deserved. As the art historian Dennis Raverty

with making screenprints largely based on the life

later observed, “It could be argued that an

and writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. We also

exhibition that placed Europeans on an equal

talked about the metal sculptures which he had

footing (with the Americans) was sure to arouse

produced previous to his time here: they were

hostility at that time, as would a show that gave

given these highly polished mirror surfaces to

such an important place to sculpture”.² Today New

reflect their surroundings. Unlike the work of his

Images of Man has assumed a notable place in the

contemporaries, David Smith and Anthony Caro,

history of 20th Century art: on a visit to the Tate in

Paolozzi’s sculptures are not mere objects of pure

2005 I noticed that one gallery, showing several of

form, but engage with the world in which we exist.

the artists of the 1958 exhibition, was called “New Images of Man”, with excerpts from my catalogue

During his time in California, he went to

introduction as a wall label.

Disneyland, the wax museums in San Francisco and Los Angeles, to Frederick’s lingerie show

In 1964, fascinated by the changes that had

rooms and Paramount Studios in Hollywood. He

occurred in the artist’s work, I curated a small show

also spent time at the University’s Computer

of four new sculptures and As Is When screenprints

Center, Stanford University’s Linear Accelerator

at MoMA. Paolozzi now focused on modern

Center, Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa

technology and worked with technicians to execute

Monica and the General Motors Assembly Plant in

his ideas. He used geometric elements, had them

Hayward. Paolozzi always saw art, especially his

cast in corrosive aluminum, used in the aircraft

own, in its cultural context: earlier he focused on

industry and produced industrial collages. One of

products of mass communication such as

the pieces from this show, Lotus (1964) was acquired

newspapers or publicity brochures, now he used

by the Museum. It is a sculpture in which a relief of

industrial techniques for his chromed steel and

concentric circles on a square slab is mounted on

polished aluminum in his search for what he

tubular legs and can be seen as an industrial

called “the sublime in everyday life”.

version of his St.Sebastian of the previous decade.

Notes 1) Pierre Restany, “La XXXII Biennale di Venezia”, quoted in Serge Guilbaut (ed), Reconstructing Modernism ( Canbridge, The MIT Press, 1990) p.400. 2) Dennis Raverty, “Critical Perspectives on New Images of Man, Art Journal, Winter 1994,p.65

In 1968, when I had left MoMA to become the founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum, I was able to have Paolozzi invited for a lectureship at the University of California. Eduardo was my house guest during his semester at Berkeley. Thinking that I was in charge of the practice of art

fig.2

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St. Sebastian I 1957, bronze, h.68 in / 173 cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art




Introduction to ‘New Images of Man’ Exhibition Catalogue, MoMA, 1959 Peter Selz

Marsyas had no business playing the flute. Athena,

Again in this generation a number of painters and

who invented it, had tossed it aside because it

sculptors, courageously aware of a time of dread,

distorted the features of the player. But when

have found articulate expression for the “eternal

Marsyas, the satyr of Phrygia, found it, he

wounds of existence.” This voice may “ dance and

discovered that he could play on it the most

yell like a madman” (Jean Dubuffet), like the

wondrous strains. He challenged beautiful Apollo,

drunken, flute-playing maenads of Phrygia.

who then calmly played the strings of his lyre and won the contest. Apollo’s victory was almost

The revelations and complexities of mid-twentieth-

complete, and his divine proportions, conforming

century life have called forth a profound feeling of

to the measures of mathematics, were exalted in

solitude and anxiety. The imagery of man which

fifth-century Athens and have set the standard for

has evolved from this reveals sometimes a new

the tradition of Western art. But always there was

dignity, sometimes despair, but always the

the undercurrent of Marsyas’ beauty struggling

uniqueness of man as he confronts his fate. Like

past the twisted grimaces of a satyr. These strains

Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Camus, these artists are

have their measure not in the rational world of

ware of anguish and dread, of life in which man –

geometry but in the depth of man’s emotion.

precarious and vulnerable – confronts the

Instead of a canon of ideal proportion we are

precipice, is aware of dying as well as living.

confronted by what Nietzsche called “the eternal

Their response is often deeply human without

wounds of existence.” Among the artists who come

making use of recognizable human imagery. It is

to mind are the sculptors of the Age of

found, for instance, in Mark Rothko’s expansive

Constantine, of Moissac and Souillac, the painters

ominous surfaces of silent contemplations, or in

of the Book of Durrow, the Beatus Manuscripts,

Jackson Pollock’s wildly intensive act of vociferous

and the Campo Santo; Hieronymus Bosch,

affirmation with its total commitment by the artist.

Gruenewald, Goya, Picasso and Beckmann.

In the case of the painters and sculptors discussed

fig.3 Japanese War God 1958, bronze, h.60 in / 152 cm Albright -Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo

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here, however, a new human imagery unique to our

effigies takes the place of politics and moral

century has been evolved.

philosophy, and the showing forth must stand in its own right as artistic creation.

Like the more abstract artists of the period, these imagists take the human situation, indeed the

In many ways these artists are inheritors of the

human predicament rather than formal structure,

romantic tradition. The passion, the emotion, the

as their starting point. Existence rather than

break with both idealistic form and realistic matter,

essence is of the greatest concern to them. And if

the trend towards the demoniac and cruel, the

Apollo, from the pediment of Olympia to

fantastic and imaginary – all belong to the

Brancusi’s Torso of a Young Man, represents

romantic movement which, beginning in the

essence, the face of Marsyas has the dread of

eighteenth century, seems never to have stopped.

existence, the premonition of being flayed alive. But the art historian can also relate these images to These images do not indicate the “return to the

the twentieth-century tradition. Although most of

human figure” or the “new humanism” which the

the works show no apparent debt to cubism, they

advocates of the academies have longed for, which,

would be impossible without the cubist revolution

indeed they and their social-realist counterparts

in body image and in pictorial space. Apollinaire

have hopefully proclaimed with great frequency,

tells us in his allegorical language that one of

ever since the rule of the academy was shattered.

Picasso’s friends “brought him one day to the

There is surely no sentimental revival and no

border of a mystical country whose inhabitants

cheap self-aggrandizement in these effigies of the

were at once so simple and so grotesque that one

disquiet man.

could easily remake them. And then after all, since anatomy, for instance, no longer existed in art, he

These images are often frightening in their

had to reinvent it, and carry out his own

anguish. They are created by artists who are no

assassination with the practised and methodical

longer satisfied with “significant form” or even the

hand of a great surgeon.” Picasso’s reinvention of

boldest act of artistic expression. They are perhaps

anatomy, which has been called cubism, was

aware of the mechanized barbarism of a time

primarily concerned with exploring the reality of

which, notwithstanding Buchenwald and

form and its relation to space, whereas the imagists

Hiroshima, is engaged in the preparation of even

we are now dealing with often tend to use a

greater violence in which the globe is to be the

similarly shallow space in which they explore the

target. Or perhaps they express their rebellion

reality of man. In a like fashion the unrestricted use

against a dehumanization in which man, it seems,

of materials by such artists as Dubuffet and

is to be reduced to an object of experiment. Some

Paolozzi would have been impossible without the

of these artists have what Paul Tillich calls the

early collages by Picasso and Braque, but again the

“courage to be,” to face the situation and to state

cubists were playing with reality for largely formal

the absurdity. “Only the cry of anguish can bring

reasons, whereas the contemporary artists may use

us to life.”

pastes, cinder, burlap or nails to reinforce their psychological presentation.

But politics, philosophy and morality do not in themselves account for their desire to formulate

These men own a great debt to the emotionally

these images. The act of showing forth these

urgent and subjectively penetrating painting of the

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expressionism from the early Kokoshka to the late Soutine. Like them they renounce la belle peinture and are “bored by the esthetic,” as Dubuffet writes. Like most expressionists these artists convey an almost mystical faith in the power of effigy, to the making of which they are driven by “inner necessity.” Yet the difference lies in this special power of the effigy, which has become an icon, a poppet, a fetish. Kokoschka and Soutine still do likenesses, no matter how preoccupied with their own private agonies and visions; Dubuffet and de Kooning depart further from specificity, and present us with a more generalized concept of Man or Woman. Much of this work would be inconceivable without Dada’s audacious break with the sacrosanct “rules of art” in favor of free self-contradiction, but negativism, shock value, and polemic are no longer ends in themselves. The Surrealists, too, used the devices of Dada – the rags, the pastes, the readymades, the found object – and transported the picture into the realm of the fantastic and supernatural. Here the canvas becomes a magic object. Non-rational subjects are treated spontaneously, semi-automatically, sometimes deliriously. Dream, hallucination and confusion are used in a desire “to deepen the foundations of the real.” Automatism was considered both a satisfying and powerful means of expression because it took the artist to the very depths of his being. The conscious was to be visibly to the unconscious and fused into a mysterious whole as in Giacometti’s The Palace at 4 A.M., where the reference of each object within the peculiarly shifting space – the space of the dream – is so ambiguous as never to furnish a precise answer to our question about it. But all too often surrealism “offered us only a subject when we needed an image.” The surrealist artist wants us to inquire, to attempt to “read” the work, and to remain perplexed. In the City Square, which Giacometti fig. 4 Jason 1956, bronze, h.66 in / 168 cm Museum of Modern Art, New York

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did sixteen years later, we are no longer dealing

African carving, they are enraptured not so much

with a surrealist object. The space still isolates the

by its plastic quality or its tactile values, but rather

figures, but instead of an ambiguous dream image

by its presence as a totemic image. They may

we have a more specific statement about man’s

appreciate the ancient tribal artist’s formal

lack of mutual relationship.

sensibilities; they truly envy his shamanistic powers.

Finally the direct approach to the material itself on the part of contemporary painters and sculptors,

The artists represented here – painters and

the concern with color as pigment, the interest in

sculptors, European and American – have arrived

the surface as a surface, belongs to these artists as

at a highly interesting and perhaps significant

much as it does to the non-figurative painters and

imagery which is concomitant with their formal

sculptors of our time. The material – the heavy

structures. This combination of contemporary

pigmentation in de Kooning’s “Women,” the

form with a new kind of iconography developing

corroded surfaces of Richier’s sculpture – help

into a “New Image” is the only element these

indeed in conveying the meaning. Dubuffet was

artists hold in common. It cannot be emphasized

one of the first artists who granted almost

too strongly that this is not a school, not a group,

complete autonomy to his material when he did

not a movement. In fact, few of these artists know

his famous “pastes” of the early 1940s. Even

each other and any similarities are the result of the

Francis Bacon wrote: “Painting in this sense tends

time in which they live and see. They are

towards a complete interlocking of image and

individuals affirming their personal identity as

paint, so that the image is in the paint and vice

artists in a time of stereotypes and

versa… I think that painting today is pure intuition

standardizations which have affected not only life

and luck and taking advantage of what happens

in general but also many of our contemporary art

when you splash the stuff down.” But it is also

exhibitions. Because of the limitations of space, we

important to remember that Dubuffet’s or Bacon’s

could not include many artists whose work merits

forms never simply emerge from an

recognition. While it is hoped that the selection

undifferentiated id. These artists never abdicate

proves to be wise, it must also be said that it was

their control of form.

the personal choice of the director of the exhibition.

The painters and sculptors discussed here have been open to a great many influences, have indeed

Notes

sought to find affirmation in the art of the past. In

New Images of Man ran at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 30 September to 29 November 1959 and featured works by, among others, Francis Bacon, César, Richard Diebenkorn, Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Germaine Richier, as well as three young British sculptors: Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler and Paolozzi

addition to the art of this century – Picasso, Gonzales, Miró, Klee, Nolde, Soutine, etc. – they have learned to know primarily the arts of the nonRenaissance tradition: children’s art, latrine art, and what Dubuffet calls art brut; the sculpture of the early Etruscans and the last Romans, the Aztecs, and Neolithic cultures. When these artists look to the past, it is the early and late civilizations which captivate them. And when they study an

fig.5 Chinese Dog 2 1958, bronze, h.36 in / 91cm Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

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Used Future: The Early Sculptures of Eduardo Paolozzi John-Paul Stonard

Eduardo Paolozzi once noted that he chose to

remains the ‘classic’ moment of Paolozzi’s oeuvre,

become a sculptor because of a desire to create

and attests to his position by the mid 1950s not

‘things’.1 Things, rather than art: the distinction

only as a leading international sculptor, but also

remained important for the rest of his life. For the

one of the most pungent interpreters of the

eighteen-year old Paolozzi, ‘art’ meant the

conditions of post-War life. No artist responded

academic training at the Slade, where he studied:

more intuitively and with less self-consciousness to

modelling from the antique, stone carving, copying

the quiddity of daily life, to the demands of place

from the old masters, life drawing, a general

and time; from the rubble-strewn streets of post-

servitude to the traditions of western art. ‘Things’

War London, through to the growing materialism

meant, largely speaking, everything else: the

and economic revitalisation of the 1950s.

substance of real life, objects that spoke of the In England at this time the dominant model for

contemporary predicament — worldly things.

sculpture remained the classicism of Henry Moore, Following his studies at the Slade, and for the first

‘so final and so convincing’, that it was necessary

two decades after the War, Paolozzi explored the

for a young sculptor to turn to European artists,

contemporary predicament in a unique manner.

and in particular to Picasso, to produce anything at

His work evolved from the mysterious world of

all original.2 Even in his earliest sculptures, the

nature and animals, as with the small bronze Paris

now lost plaster version of Bull,3 later cast in

Bird (fig.12), to a series of monumental figurative

bronze (cat.1), a remarkably confident and

works collaged from found objects, notably Jason

expressive early work, and the several versions in

(fig.4). By the early 1960s he had turned to a more

cast concrete of Horse’s Head (cat.2), made outside

abstract, architectural style in welded aluminium,

the Academy in the basement of the Slade Student

for example The World Divides into Facts. Dazzling

hostel at 28 Cartwright Gardens (‘in order not to

and physically imposing though works from this

be disturbed or criticised’),4 Paolozzi demonstrated

moment can be, they lack in many cases the fragile,

this feeling that something better was being done

exploratory quality of the early period, which

elsewhere, and by other means: ‘the outer edge of

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fig.6 Fishermen (Newhaven) 1946, ink on paper, 18 x 26 in / 46 x 66 cm Private Collection

my soul was being tugged at by an invisible other

recalled: ‘As the sculpture school had become

world’, as he later put it.5 Horse’s Head strikingly

intolerable I had spent the previous six months

anticipates the motif developed from the early

working in the basement making sculptures out of

1950s by Paolozzi’s fellow Slade student William

concrete and plaster, and black-and-white ink

Turnbull. Turnbull had produced a sculpture of a

drawings heavily influenced by Picasso who was

horse’s head of almost exactly the same

richly represented – [in] books from the shelves of

dimensions during the same year; which lacked

Peter Watson who gave me his benedictions. Peter

however the simplified, cartoon-like nature of

Watson at that time had bought a bronze

Paolozzi’s version.6 Picasso’s roughly carved,

chandelier designed by Giacometti and needed

expressive natural forms, using animal and plant

help to erect it. Consequently these Picassoid

motifs, had a clear influence on the handful of

student works were reproduced, thanks to Peter, in

‘Picassoid’ sculptures he made at this time and

the magazine Horizon with a wonderful text by

showed at the Mayor Gallery in 1947 (the others

Robert Melville, and were exhibited at the Mayor

were Seagull and Fish, and Blue Fisherman). He later

Gallery’.7

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The Mayor Gallery exhibition, Paolozzi’s first oneman show sold out; a coup for the twenty-three year old artist, still a student. It was a sign of his obstinately independent nature that he used the proceeds to quit the London art world for Paris, departing, according to legend, with a tin trunk of his possessions, and living on next to no money — when Nigel Henderson visited, Paolozzi provided him with a list of basic items to bring, cooking ingredients and art materials. Life in Paris was a matter more of experience than productivity. His time was largely spent seeing art – from the ‘tiny hippopotami’ that he saw in a case in the Louvre on the first day he arrived,8 to the art collection of Mary Reynolds. It was a time of measuring himself against the remnants of the pre-War avant-garde – he arrived in time to visit the last large Surrealist group exhibition, ‘Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme,’ which opened at the Galerie Maeght in July. The catalogue featured Marcel Duchamp’s Prière de Toucher on the cover, and artists from twenty-five countries were represented, but it was clear that the pre-War spirit of Surrealism had not been recaptured – certain renegade figures, such as Tristan Tzara, were now criticising the movement on political grounds, and the social basis of the original group had dispersed. When it came to making work, however, the clear point of reference for the group of seven sculptures by Paolozzi that survive from 1948–9 was the pre-War work of Giacometti. Two Forms on Rod (cat.5) is often compared with Giacometti’s

fig.7 Horse’s Head 1946, ink & collage on paper 19 x 9 in / 49 x 23 cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Man and Woman (1929), and echoes the harsh organic forms and psychological tension of the Swiss artist’s work of the 1930s.9 Similarly, Bird (1949, Tate), may at first glance suggest a direct

to his sense of a mysterious, sometimes threatening

comparison with Giacometti’s Woman with her

world of natural forms. He was also impressed by

throat cut (1932), and Table Sculpture (Growth)

Giacometti’s self-belief: ‘he was a real artist

(cat.6), with La table, made by Giacometti in 1933.

because he was obsessed about his ideas and

It was the directness and pungency of Giacometti’s

worked all night, and everything else in life for him

sculptures that appealed to Paolozzi, in particular

was just a grey shadow’.10 But there is also an

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fig.8 Tate

Forms on a Bow No.1 1949, bronze, 211⁄2 x 251⁄2 in / 65 x 67cm

important difference; rather than an endless and

versions of Forms on a Bow (fig.8; cat.4), remain the

poetic transformation of objects, a flipping

first major statement of a sculptural idea in

between readings and strong association with

Paolozzi’s oeuvre – it was less in sculpture than in

literature, Paolozzi was engaged with the mute

two other areas, collage and bas-reliefs, that

power of objects and shapes that defy

Paolozzi made his most important innovations of

transformation — not representing a body of

the Paris period. The combination of these two

thought, or illustrating poetic texts, but appearing

formats, collage as sculptural relief and sculptural

as natural objects, strange and irreconcilable.

relief as collage, proved to be the crucible out of which emerged much of Paolozzi’s later work. His

Notwithstanding the power of these early

focus on collage during the Paris period evolved

Surrealist-influenced sculptures – and the four

naturally out of his earliest, childhood obsessions,

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copying pictures from newspapers and magazines. Alongside more conventional papier collés, using coloured paper and lettering to create semiabstract compositions, Paolozzi continued producing photomontage-like works, in particular the extraordinary ‘Museum-book’ collages (present author’s term) that he had begun making while at the Slade, for example Butterfly and Group of Gauls (fig.9 & 10). These culminated in the small collagebook Psychological Atlas, made around 1949, and which appears as a survey of the scenery and psychology of post-War Europe. For this book, now a tattered relic kept as an archival item at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Paolozzi took the catalogue from an exhibition of art held in Germany while the country was still under occupation, and created a series of double-page spreads with material that provides a strange, oblique snapshot of the moment. fig.9 Group of Gauls 1947, collage 93⁄4 x 71⁄4 in / 24.5 x 18.5 cm Paolozzi Foundation / Jonathan Clark Fine Art

Paolozzi's early experiments with bas-relief, in particular the creation of plaster tiles incised with decorative or abstract motifs, with strong emphasis on surface rather than sculptural mass, was equally important for the development of his sculpture over the next decade or so. Fish (plaster, 1948) measures about one foot square and suggests marine motifs and insects, crustaceans fossilised in plaster. Nature is clearly the key to Paolozzi’s work in relief, and the sense of a hidden mystery preserved in nature, as if these were fossils that had survived the destructive influence of human culture. A number of these reliefs were made after a visit to St. Jean de Luz, and evoked maritime and lunar landscapes, and may be compared with the strangeness – the displaced quality – of the collages in the Psychological Atlas. A relationship between collage and relief work was evolving in Paolozzi’s work that allowed a concentration on forms as images, rather than as sculptural mass, and on images as something tangible, rather than as flat and ‘notional’.

fig.10 Butterfly 1946, collage 73⁄4 x 51⁄2 in / 19.8 x 14 cm Paolozzi Foundation / Jonathan Clark Fine Art

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Those bas-reliefs Paolozzi made in Paris were exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Mayor Gallery during May 1949.11 Poor sales from this exhibition — only one was sold, to Roland Penrose — obliged Paolozzi to return to England in October 1949. Just before he left Paris two unidentified sculptures and two bas-reliefs were included in the third ‘Les Mains éblouies’ exhibition at the Galerie Maeght, Paris — but Paolozzi brought the majority of his sculpture back with him to London, and there cast it in bronze for his first exhibition at the Hanover Gallery in 1950, alongside works by Kenneth King and William Turnbull.12

•

Where was sculpture at mid-century? Artists working in Britain were certainly amongst the pioneers of modern sculpture, notably Epstein and Moore, who had made it their task to redefine sculpture as an independent art, rather than as architectural adornment, or as a matter of commemoration. Such innovations were on a par with avant-garde developments in Paris, and were an important precedent for the international success of British sculptors later in the century. The crucial step was to generate an iconography of sculpture that was as independent and nonnaturalistic as that used by modernist painters, in particular abandoning academic study of the human body. If in his work of the late 1940s Paolozzi shows a full awareness of this new independence of modernist sculpture, on his return to England he confronted what was to become the central question of sculpture in the wake of modernism: how to reintroduce the human figure into this newly independent art. For Paolozzi it became a matter of skin, of an organic surface implying a living interior. Worn, fig.11 Target 1947, ink & collage on paper 20 x 73⁄4 in / 51 x 19.5 cm Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

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complex surfaces came to take on a particular

sculpture, and constituted the ‘Brutalist’ aesthetic

meaning, and were derived at least in part from the

of his work during the 1950s.

material aesthetic of Paolozzi’s collage books, compiled with material often deliberately

Attempts to create a meaningful sculptural 'skin'

distressed to contrast with the glamour and

appear earliest in the versions of Mr Cruikshank, of

technology of the printed images from which they

1950, the model for which Paolozzi took from

were made. If life was rough and broken, so too

illustrations in American magazines. ‘Mr

should be any given image of a man. These

Cruikshank’ was the name given by American

suffering surfaces came to define Paolozzi’s

scientists to the wooden dummy of a human

fig.12 Paris Bird 1948, bronze 131⁄2 x 14 in / 34 x 35 cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

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shoulder-length bust used in X-radiography testing. Paolozzi cut-out articles on the experiments and included them on a double-page spread in the collage book ‘Crane and Hoist Engineering’ (titled after the book Paolozzi cannibalised as the template for his collage book). ‘A stand-in for a living man, Mr. Cruikshank has helped solve problems relating to X-ray treatment of deep brain tumours. His wooden noggin, sectioned to hold film, has the same X-ray absorption properties as the human head. He poses before a two-millionvolt, X-ray generator in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His name, picked at random, has no special significance’, runs the caption for one. In Paolozzi’s hands the figure becomes a portrait bust of contemporary man, a representative of the anonymous mass. The surviving plaster model of Mr Cruikshank is divided up for casting, leaving seams showing on the bronze cast that suggest a fabricated human head, or a robot. For further versions of Mr Cruikshank, Paolozzi adopted a different method of fabrication, soldering together thin strips of tin cut from cans, producing something more tender and fragile, with the pathos of a reliquary bust (cat.7).13 Paolozzi was not alone in his interest in the motif of the human head, which presented an immediate solution to the introduction of the human body, whilst retaining a focus on abstract form. It was important enough to be the subject of an exhibition at the ICA in 1953, 'Wonder and Horror of the Human Head’, which was also the occasion for a lecture on ‘The Human Head in Modern Art’ by the critic Lawrence Alloway. It appears more obliquely in the mysterious, inscrutable work Contemplative Object (1951; fig.13) comprising a rock-like form with strange carvings and markings, reminding us perhaps of the Mayan Zoomorphs from Quirigua, great unquarried sandstone boulders carved with animal motifs. A similar

25


work, Study for a larger version in concrete (1951) was

and yet there are people who do it every day in the

one of three sculptures by Paolozzi shown at the

foundries’.17 The high cost of metal founding,

British Pavilion at the 1952 Venice Biennale

which had proved prohibitively expensive for the

(alongside Bird, and Forms on a Bow, both 1950).

first Hanover Gallery exhibition, as well as the

It was undoubtedly the first work by Paolozzi to

need to take control of the process and

appear on an international stage: Study for a larger

experiment, made the home-spun approach more

version in concrete was included in Michel Tapié’s

attractive. In any case, since his days of producing

1952 publication Un art autre, and a cast was

works in his student lodgings, rather than in the

purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, New

Slade studios, Paolozzi always seemed happier

York, in 1952.15 Paolozzi’s affinity with the type of

working from home. Still, only five works are dated

‘Art Informel’ being promoted by Tapié, and a

to the next two years: the small unique bronze Fish

young generation of European artists and critics,

(the plaster original of which had been exhibited in

can be seen by the comparison of his works by

the exhibition ‘Young Sculptors’ at the ICA in

those with Dubuffet, whose scarred and scratched

1952, and cast in bronze the next year at the

figures seem rescued directly from the crumbling

request of the owner) and Head from 1953; and

walls and pavements of an older, now outmoded

from the next year another work titled Head, this

European habitat. Of the Study for a larger version

time a version lying on its side showing its hollow

in concrete, Paolozzi later wrote that ‘The artist

construction, and the small, strange homunculi

intends that the sculpture should represent

Head and Arm.18

14

symbolically; the world of sea life’.16 Divorced from its body, the human head suggests a However much the ‘human’, societal element was

psychology of form — a thoughtful mass

pressing, he had remained, nevertheless in the

constructed from the objects that it perceives. In

realm of nature: he had yet to step outside this

works such as the 1954 screen print Automobile

magic circle and produce sculptures that were able

Head, the motif functions as a way of showing the

to reflect on nature as threatening and threatened,

interaction of the body and society – it shows how

something other to human life, but also dependent

‘objects from the environment became the collage-

on it. The crucial moment, as is so often the case,

skins of the beings in that environment’, in the

came with the revelation of the possibilities

words of Diane Kirkpatrick.19 Alongside Automobile

presented by new techniques and materials. In late

Head, a number of works on paper made in 1953

1953 Paolozzi took a room at 1 East Heath Road,

show Paolozzi exploring the theme of the flattened

Hampstead, the home of Dorothy Morland, then

and de-featured human head in a manner very

the director of the ICA. Together with her son,

close to Dubuffet. The overriding sense is of

Francis, also a sculptor, Paolozzi began casting

pathos, of the human body, and psyche, subjected

works at a home-made foundry using the lost wax

to suffering. As such, Paolozzi takes his place in a

method. Paolozzi later described his method: ‘Well

tradition of modern sculptors who, as Leo

you make an oven, you make a wax, and then you

Steinberg put it, show the body not as the hero but

put… investment round it as it’s called, and then

as the victim of life.20

you burn the wax out, and then you just melt the metal and pour it in. And then after that there’s

Paolozzi is in this sense close to Henry Moore, who

still a lot of work getting rid of the investment and

made figures of pathos throughout his life.

cutting the runners off. It’s frightfully hard graft,

Paolozzi's recumbent Head of 1954 could be by the

26


fig.13 Contemplative Object c.1951, plaster with bronze coating, h.91⁄2 x 181⁄2 in / 24 x 47cm Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

older artist, if it was not hollow, a stark exposure of

recorded in the marks left by that action on the

sculpture as mere object to which Moore could

surface.

never resort. Moore’s figures may be pierced, but never actually empty. This hollowness is a means

The comparison of Paolozzi and Moore is worth a

both to emphasise a kind of symbolic affect of the

brief aside. According to Lawrence Alloway,

works — dehumanisation — but also to emphasise

Paolozzi ‘avoided, like the plague, not only the

the surface, and the sense in which the meaning of

virtuosity of Reg Butler, but the competence of

an object derives from what has been done to it,

Henry Moore’.21 On the evidence of their works of

27


the 1950s, there are however a number of points of

information on a material ‘with similar properties

close comparison. A Brutalist tendency – of scarred

to plaster which can be used directly with molten

surfaces and distressed organic forms – infuses

metal without baking’.22 He probably discovered

Moore’s work, for example in the small Head of

the solution on his own — modelling directly in

1955, a knotted, primitive apparition directly

wax. A number of small wax figurines show that

comparable with Paolozzi’s version of the same

Paolozzi had been experimenting with the medium

subject from 1952. Moore’s Wall Relief maquettes

at the time, making works recalling small figurines

from the same year show a remarkably similar

that Dubuffet had begun making the previous

procedure to that developed by Paolozzi the

year.23 It was however the combination of the use

following year, of creating a relief by imprinting

of wax and the type of relief panels that Paolozzi

objects on a flat surface. If the ‘Brutalist moment’

had been making since the late 1940s which

in Moore’s work showed his awareness of the

produced the necessary synthesis. At some point

importance of the sculptural surface as a conveyor

during 1953/4 Paolozzi had made a large relief

of meaning, it was an awareness he was unable to

panel, which still exists, using wax, wood, and

develop — he simply could not abandon the

found objects. The decisive step came with the

plenitude, sensuousness and essential optimism on

realisation that the relief could be made in plaster,

which so much of his work was based. Above all, it

found objects used to create negative impressions

was his inability to abandon the imagined notion

over which molten wax could be poured to create

of a ‘full’ sculptural form, even in those works such

sheets with positive impressions. Paolozzi later

as the Helmet Head series that have empty interiors,

recalled that the wax-sheet sculptures had been

that distinguishes his work from Paolozzi’s

made at the small cottage at Thorpe Le Soken,

relentless hollowness. A hollow head for Moore

Essex, bought from Nigel Henderson in 1953, to

was just a helmet – for Paolozzi it was a burnt out,

where he had moved with his wife Freda the next

yet still-living form.

year. ‘I began with clay rolled out on a table. Into the clay I pressed pieces of metal, toys, etc. I also

By 1955, however, Paolozzi had reached an impasse

sometimes scored the clay. From there I proceeded

in his quest to re-introduce the human figure. No

in one of two ways. Either I would pour wax

sculpture, cast or otherwise fabricated, is securely

directly on to the clay to get a sheet or I would

dated to this year. The meagre output was in part

pour plaster onto the clay. With the plaster I then

because his attention was direct elsewhere, to

had a positive and a negative form on which to

teaching textiles at Central St Martins, and to the

pour wax. The wax sheets were pressed around

founding of a textile and design company, Hammer

forms, cut up and added to forms or turned into

Prints Ltd, alongside Judith and Nigel Henderson

shapes on their own. The waxes were cast into

during the summer of 1954. Paolozzi was also faced

bronze at Fiorini and Carney in London’.24

with the problem of finding a material by which he could make large sculptures with ‘collage-skins’. In

It was on this basis that Paolozzi returned,

the summer of 1954 he wrote to several foundries,

extremely energetically, to making sculpture. 25

describing the orthodox lost-wax method he had

During the summer of 1956 ten small sculptures

been using, noting that while it was excellent for

were exhibited at the Hanover Gallery, some of

small scale work, it presented problems for

which had been cast at Susse Frères in Paris.26

anything ‘life size and over’, and requested

These works, all but one of which were made, or at

28



least cast, in 1956, show Paolozzi’s first

Gallery that Paolozzi's dramatis personae took to the

experimentations with wax as a modelling medium,

stage most memorably, in a striking survey of the

and notably include the first version of Chinese

first mature period of Paolozzi's sculpture – an

Dog. Coeval with the Hanover Gallery exhibition,

exhibition unrivalled since. Thirty-seven works

the historic exhibition This is Tomorrow ran at the

were displayed, including a host of smaller figures,

Whitechapel Gallery. Eleven groups of artists

from the King Kong-like Monkey eating a Nut (1957)

contributed individual displays reflecting on

to the pathos-laden two versions of Icarus (fig.15),

contemporary art and life. ‘Group Six’ comprised

made the same year, whose stumpy wooden arms,

Paolozzi, the artist Nigel Henderson, and the

broken at the elbows, strongly recall Dubuffet’s use

architects Alison and Peter Smithson, who built a

of twigs and wire to create his figurines; to an

shelter-like pavilion, subsequently populated by

imposing cohort of the larger figural works, such as

Paolozzi and Henderson with objects and images,

Japanese War God, of 1958 (fig.3). A photograph

‘symbols for all human needs’, according to the

included in the catalogue shows Paolozzi sizing up

exhibition catalogue. The display was titled ‘Patio

to the wax model for this large standing figure, and

and Pavilion’. It is noticeable that Paolozzi chose

we get the sense of his satisfaction of having

not to include his most recent sculptures, but

overcome the technical difficulties of casting such

rather Contemplative Object and also an

a large figure, a rival for his own physical energy

unidentified small mannequin-type figure,

and presence. Of the smaller works shown at the

comparable with a number of small figure

Hanover Gallery, Shattered Head (cat.12) presents

sculptures from 1956, such as Little Warrior. The

one of the most complete statements of Paolozzi’s

reason may have been pragmatic — most of his

dialogue of surface and void. Patches of metal

sculptures were on display at the Hanover Gallery

define the head like bandages, the vacant interior

exhibition which ran concurrently. Photographs

visible through the interstices. Shattered Head is

show an array of tiles and objects arranged on the

one of the haunting hollow men of twentieth-

floor as if from an archaeological dig. Some at least

century art, a witness of life reduced to brute

must have been ceramic tiles made by Paolozzi at

survival. We may compare it with a sculpture made

the Central School, but again are unidentified.

by the Spanish artist Julio González two decades previously, Torso (1936), using a similar, if

Although it remained largely uninhabited, ‘Patio

antecedent method of fragmented planar

and Pavilion’ may be seen as a stage on which the

construction: the two works appear as if they have

much larger figures Paolozzi began making at the

been recovered from the same archaeological dig,

time could have appeared. It was comparable in

originally part of a single antique standing figure.

this respect with a number of other display interiors of the time, spaces in which the new

As a pathos-laden monument the human head

figurative sculpture could be inscribed. For his

motif is developed in a series of works beginning

‘Gallery for a Collector of Brutalist and Tachiste

with Krokodeel (fig.1), a hollow bronze head just

Art’ at the Ideal Home Exhibition of 1958, Richard

over one metre high, and then with two

Hamilton included, amongst other design objects

monumental works from 1958; A.G.5 (cat.14), and

and works of art, Paolozzi’s 1956 Chinese Dog as the

Very Large Head. These works are both cast and

only sculpture. It was however at the Hanover

welded — Paolozzi cast sections from wax

fig.14 St Sebastian No.III 1958–9, bronze, h.87 in / 221 cm Rijksmuseum Kröller-Muller, Otterlo

30




originals, and then had these welded together to

vision of the future as already past, a ‘used future’,

form a hollow, almost cage-like structure. The

to use a term that became dominant in post-War

surface is dirty and pitted, here encrusted with

American cinema.

objects, studio and mechanical detritus, there with typographers letters, sometimes with just an earthy

Paolozzi considered his sculpture Jason, made in

unidentified substance. Present-day objects are

1956 and now in the collection of the Museum of

lifted into a timeless sphere where the future is

Modern Art, New York (fig.4), as one his best works

figured as a ruin, and antiquity as a presentiment

of the period. The title and forms of the sculpture

of this ruin. Time is collapsed within the course

were inspired, he later wrote, by Martha Graham’s

fabric of a human — barely human — figure.

briefing for the character of Jason in the ballet Medea, by Samuel Barber, subtitled ‘Cave of the

Having established this new, monumental

Heart’, who ‘should exist on two time levels, the

figurative style of sculpture, based on collage and

ancient and the modern world’.29 By contrast with

assemblage with a strong emotive resonance,

other monumental standing figures, Jason is a

Paolozzi began to develop individual motifs,

fragile, delicate work, life-size and with a slight

notably the head and the standing figure. Nowhere

sense of contraposto, that in such a fragmented

is this dialogue of antiquity and modernity more

figure can only be read as pathos. In a set of

powerfully embodied than in the series of standing

teaching notes produced for students at St

figures that Paolozzi began to make from 1956,

Martin’s School of Art the next year, Paolozzi used

which dominated the display at the Hanover

Barber’s configuration of Jason as at once a ‘God-

Gallery. Michel Leiris's description of Giacometti's

like superhuman figure’ of Greek tragedy, who

sculptures, published in English in 1949, holds

would then step out of his legendary role and

true for those by Paolozzi, envisioning them as

become ‘modern man’.30

points at which 'thousands of years of antiquity converge with an abrupt interruption of time: the

The same may be said for the four major figures of

sudden uncovering of a figure in which the whole

St Sebastian (fig.2 &14) that, in a strange way, echo

of a long past is for ever summed up’.27 Yet

the four earlier Forms on a Bow, made ten years

Paolozzi’s figures also arise from a different vision

previously.31 With reference to the second in the

of the future, and the past — not of timeless

series, purchased by the Guggenheim Museum,

humanity, but deeply implicated with the

New York, in 1958, Paolozzi stated that he was

technology of his day, and as such occupy a

interested not in the iconography St Sebastian’s

different physical and imaginary space: the thickly-

martyrdom by bow and arrow, but rather in his

encrusted surface of Robot (1956), comprising small

‘second’, less well-known martyrdom, being

objects lost in a lava-like surface, hollow, brittle,

‘clubbed to death by his company after not

seems as if salvaged after centuries at the bottom

shooting to kill’, according to Paolozzi, who added

of the sea — the ‘vernacular spolia of reality’, as

that it was not based on religious belief, but rather

they have been pungently described. Paolozzi’s

on his interest in the ‘irony of man and hero – the

‘brutalist’ vision was not of gleaming perfection

hollow god’.32

27

and technological optimism but of decay and obsolescence. It is a vision of the present based on

The monstrous cranium, encrusted torso and

a vision of the future, but with little idealism: a

tubular legs of St Sebastian II are indeed all

fig.15 Icarus II 1957, bronze, h.60 in / 100 cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

33


hollow, ‘caves of the heart’ constructed from the

Gallery in New York in 1962, and currently

detritus of a timeless world. Pathos is perhaps over-

untraced, suggests a precarious, pre-fabricated

emphasised by the words formed by typographers

tower, an anonymous corporate architecture with

letters attached to the back of the figure, ‘Please

threatening potential. Such a reading is borne out

leave me alone’, which suggest also the personal

by a work made the following year, Tyrannical

nature of these sculptures for Paolozzi; their status

Tower, a stacked-box structure incorporating

as alter-egos. In a further work in the series, St

heavily worked relief surfaces. Architecture

Sebastian III (fig.14) the distinction between the

evolves as a metaphor for power structures, and

head and the torso has disappeared entirely, and

thus retains a connection with the human body in

the impression is given more of a tower block on

terms of ‘personality’ – but all other formal

stilts, in ruin.

references are gone.

I suggested at the beginning of this essay, in

What might we make of all this? After 1964

relation to the 1963 The World Divides into Facts,

Paolozzi became a different type of artist: more

that Paolozzi’s concerns shifted from the human

worldly, perhaps, with more extensive resources at

body to the architectural at the beginning of the

his disposal. None of the later works, particularly

1960s.33 In fact the transition was more gradual,

the large public sculptures, achieve the same

and it was clear that architectural elements, both in

intensity of form of the 1950s, the imbrication of

terms of principles of construction, and formal

worldly clutter and an intelligent vocabulary of

motifs, were already part of his large figurative

sculptural form. For the first decade after the war

works during the 1950s. If St Sebastian III seems

Paolozzi dealt with nature and natural imagery

half-man, half-tower block, then the impression of

that could be referred back to Klee, Picasso and

an architectural edifice is even less ambiguous in a

Ernst in equal measure; but after his return from

further series of works made around 1958/9, in

Paris, with the introduction of the ‘image of man’

particular His Majesty the Wheel (fig.16) and

(as it was then so often termed) the focus shifted

Mechanik Zero(cat.15), both dating to that time.

from the mystery of nature to nature’s ruin: to the

Mechanik Zero in particular shows the organic

spectacle of a ‘used future’ that had already begun.

forms of the human figure tipping into an

The power of Paolozzi’s vision came from his

engineered form, imposing a rich set of rhythms on

obsession with the fate of the things of his world,

this metaphor, and suggesting a renewed use of

rather than arising from a concept of ‘art’, and his

surrealist metaphoric form. By 1960 the shift was

work may be best described as a vast archive of

complete, the transition even recorded in the title

worldly things. From today’s perspective the early

of a work from 1960 –1, Legs as Lintels. The idea of

sculptures constitute both the foundation and the

the human body as an architectural construct –

standards by which the rest of this archive is

essentially a post and lintel structure of legs and

ordered; and one of the most intriguing and

torso, uncomplicated by arms or distinction

advanced bodies of sculpture produced anywhere

between torso and head – is carried on in certain

in the post-War world.

of these works. In others, such as Triple Fuse, all sense of human reference disappears. With it disappears also an important animating element of Paolozzi’s early work, which he was not to recapture. Triple Fuse, exhibited at Betty Parsons’ fig.16

34

His Majesty The Wheel 1958, bronze, h.60 in / 152 cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art



Notes a series of slabs with strange organic markings. It is perhaps less successful in evoking an absent human form than a work from the previous year, The Cage, a strange organic cage-like structure made from wire and plaster. The notion of a linear wire sculpture also informed one of Paolozzi’s first public sculptures, his fountain for the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition; a work that looked forward to the many public commissions that he was to complete later in his career.

With thanks to Evelyn Hankins, Carmen del Valle Hermo, Jennifer Schauer, Aimee Soubier and Eugenie Tsai. 1) [REF] 2) F. Whitford, ‘Eduardo Paolozzi’, in: exh. cat., Eduardo Paolozzi, London (Tate Gallery) 1971, pp. 6 – 29, here pp.7-8. See below for a challenge to this conservative view of Moore.

14) It had been first shown at the exhibition Young Sculptors at the ICA in 1952.

3) The lost plaster original is dated 1946 according to a typed memorandum of agreement that Paolozzi drew up with a lawyer, dated 16th April 1960, in which Paolozzi gave the bronze version of Bull to his wife, Freda.

15) See: A.H. Barr, ed., ‘Painting and Sculpture Collections, July 1, 1951 – May 31, 1953’, Bulletin, vol. xx, nos.3-4, Summer 1953.

4) E. Paolozzi, ‘Memoir’, 1994, reprinted in Robbins, pp.53-60, here p.55.

16) Paolozzi described how the sculpture was made: ‘The moulds were made directly in clay: modelled in the negative : (after pouring and setting) the moulds were destroyed on removal from the work; the cast at the M.M.A [he is referring to the Museum of Modern Art, New York] was made by gelatine moulding’. Museum Collection Files. Department of Painting and Sculpture: Paolozzi. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Cited hereafter as: MOMA – Paolozzi.

5) Ibid., p.59 6) Two versions of the sculpture in coloured concrete, one white, one red, were exhibited at the 1947 Mayor Gallery exhibition Drawings by Eduardo Paolozzi (only later, in 1974, was the work cast in bronze). 7) Ibid., p.59

17) Eduardo Paolozzi, Oral History, interviewed by Frank Whitford, 1993-5, British Library.

8) Eduardo Paolozzi, ‘Statement’, in: State of Clay, exh.cat., Sunderland (Arts Center), 1978, n.p.

18) The dating of these works is imprecise, and contested; and the task of identifying any chronology or sequence is made harder by the closeness in subject matter of the works, and often identical titles. The dating of the Pallant House Standing Figure to 1953 is questioned in footnote 22 below.

9) See, for example, D. Kirkpatrick: Eduardo Paolozzi, London 1970, and W. Konnertz: Eduardo Paolozzi, Cologne 1984. Like many of Paolozzi’s works from this period, the original of Two Forms on a Rod has been lost: in this case it consisted of a single column with a projection which was then cast twice, at later date, probably in the early 1950s, and joined together to form the metal version.

19) D. Kirkpatrick, Eduardo Paolozzi, New York, 1969, p.29. 20) Leo Steinberg, ‘Gonzalez’, reprinted in Other Criteria, 1972, pp. 241-250, here p.243. 21) L. Alloway, ‘Eduardo Paolozzi’, Architectural Design (April 1956), p.133.

10) EP, interview with Richard Cork, broadcast on BBC Radio 3, March 1986. Cited in R. Spencer, ed.: Eduardo Paolozzi: Writings and Interviews, Oxford 2000, p.65. For a contemporary appraisal of Giacometti that Paolozzi knew, see: Michel Leiris, ‘Contemporary Sculptors VII – Thoughts around Giacometti’, trans. Douglas Cooper, Horizon, 19 (June 1949), p.411-17.

22) EP to ‘The Sales Manager, Morgan Crucible Ltd.’ (also sent to a London-based foundry); 26th July 1954; reprinted in Spencer, op.cit. (note 10), pp.74–5. It is on this basis that the date of the Standing Figure in the collection at Pallant House, of 1953, may be questioned. The technique of constructing a large figure using moulded and embossed sheets of wax was only developed a few years later, in 1956. No other works of this size or nature exist from this time, and it is highly unlikely that such a pioneering work would have gone unremarked at the time, or indeed subsequently.

11) Eduardo Paolozzi – Drawings and Bas-Reliefs. 12) These were cast at Morris Singer Foundry, Wilkinson’s Foundry on Tottenham Court Road, and Fiornini and Carney, Peterborough Mews, Fulham. 13) Other works made around the same moment show different attempts to bring collage and bas-relief together to evoke the human figure, notably in Paolozzi’s maquette for the Unknown Political Prisoner International Sculpture Competition (1952), showing

23) The further comparison between these works and the wax figurines of Edgar Degas is, striking — Degas’ small sculptures were only cast in bronze after his death. They show various

36


female figures, dancers and bathers, as well as horses, comprised of rough lumps of clay, often using objects embedded in the sculptures’ surface. The wax figurines had resurfaced after the war, and in 1955 were exhibited at Knoedler’s gallery in New York. 24) EP to Angelica Rudenstine, 5th August 1983. Cited in Spencer, op.cit. (note x), p.80. This ‘collage’ method is demonstrated by a set of photographs of Paolozzi at work taken around 1958. R. Fiorini & J. Carney were located in Fulham, moving from Michael Rd to Peterborough Mews in 1961; Fiorini cast Shattered Head, and Chinese Dog 2, amongst other works. 25) And also returned to teaching sculpture on a part-time basis at St Martin’s School of art (from 1955 to 1958) 26) These were: Bull (1946), and Shattered Head, Black Devil, Frog eating a lizard, One-armed torso, Man and motor-car (two versions), Small Figure (two versions) and Figure (all from 1956). These were all still on a relatively small scale, the largest being Black Devil (untraced) at 19 inches high. 27) Michel Leiris, ‘Contemporary Sculptors VII – Thoughts around Giacometti’, trans. Douglas Cooper, Horizon, 19 (June 1949), p.411-17, here p.415. 28) D. Herrmann, ‘Bronze to Aluminium and back again: Eduardo Paolozzi’s use of Materials in Sculpture c.1957–71’, Sculpture Journal 14 (December 2005), pp.71–85, here p.74. 29) MOMA – Paolozzi. 30) E.P. ‘Four Design Problems for Students of St Martin’s School of Art’, 1957. Reprinted in Spencer, op.cit. (note 10), pp. 79-8, here 78. 31) There are two versions of St Sebastian no.1, one in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the other in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. 32) ‘notes on Paolozzi’s conversation with Las’, 23rd March 1959, inter-office memorandum. Guggenheim Museum Archive: Eduardo Paolozzi. 33) Robin Spencer notes the same transformation in Paolozzi’s writings, which became ‘more structured and architectural’ in the 1960s, by contrast with the previous decade, during which it evolved more organically. p.29

37


Exhibition Catalogue

cat.2 Horse’s Head 1947, concrete, h.30 in / 76 cm Private Collection, London

cat.1 Bull 1946, bronze, l.17 in / 43 cm Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London

38



cat. 3 Icarus 1949, bronze, h.121⁄2 x 14 in / 32 x 35.5 cm Private Collection, London

40


cat. 4 Forms on a Bow No.2 1949, bronze, 191⁄2 x 243 ⁄4 in / 49 x 63 cm Leeds Museums and Galleries


cat. 5 Two Forms on a Rod 1948–9, bronze, 21 x 251⁄4 in / 53 x 64 cm Private Collection, London

cat.6 Table Sculpture (Growth) 1948, bronze, h.321⁄2 in / 83 cm Private Collection, London

42



cat.7 Tin Head – Mr Cruikshank 1950, tin, 11 x 91⁄2 in / 28 x 24 cm Tate

44



cat.8 Head Looking Up c.1956, bronze, h.11 in / 28 cm Private Collection, London

cat.9 Standing Figure 1957, bronze, h.30 3 ⁄4 in / 78 cm Daniel Katz, London

46


47


cat.10

48

Standing Figure 1953, bronze, h.341⁄2 in / 88 cm Pallant House Gallery, Chichester



cat.11 Study for Tall Figure 1956, bronze, h.17 in / 43 cm Private Collection

cat.12

50

Shattered Head c.1956, bronze, h.111⁄4 in / 31cm Private Collection, London


51


cat.13

52

Little King 1957, bronze, unique, h.56 in / 142 cm Private Collection


53


cat.14

54

A.G.5 1958, bronze, 40 x 30 in / 102 x 84 cm Offer Waterman & Co., London



cat.15

56

Mechanik Zero 1958–9, bronze, h.751⁄2 in / 191.6 cm British Council Collection



cat.16

58

Large Frog 1958, bronze, h.36 in / 92 cm Private Collection


59


Acknowledgements Jonathan Clark Fine Art would like to thank all those who have contributed to the exhibition and catalogue, in particular Toby Treves of the Paolozzi Foundation for his advice and support throughout; Robin Spencer & Caroline Cuthbert for their help in liaising with private lenders; Simon Martin at Pallant House Gallery; Jill Constantine, Lizzie Simpson & Victoria Avery at the Arts Council; Diana Eccles, Marcus Alexander & Silvia Bordin at the British Council; Penelope Curtis, Katherine Richmond & Nicole Simoes da Silva at Tate; Rebecca Herman & Jim Bright at Leeds City Art Gallery; Simon Groom at The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; Adrian Gibbs at the Bridgeman Art Library, Adrian Glew & David Pilling at Tate Archive. Finally, thanks are due to all the lenders to the exhibition who wish to remain anonymous, but whose generosity has not been unnoticed

Photo Credits All works © The Paolozzi Foundation / DACS All photography © David Farrell / Courtesy of the Artist except frontispiece © Nigel Henderson / Courtesy of Tate Images; p. 29 © Mark Kauffman / Courtesy of Time Life Pictures / Getty Images; fig. 7 Courtesy of Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Picture Library; figs 11 & 13, cat. 10 Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK/ Wilson Gift through The Art Fund/ The Bridgeman Art Library; cat. 7 © Tate, London 2011 / Courtesy of Tate Images; figs 6, 9, 10 & cat. 3, 8, 11 Douglas Atfield / Courtesy of Jonathan Clark Fine Art

Exhibition curated by Simon Hucker Texts © Peter Selz & John-Paul Stonard Catalogue © Jonathan Clark & Co (Artists Estates) Designed by Graham Rees Printed by The Five Castles Press, Ipswich Published by Jonathan Clark & Co, London 2011 ISBN 978-0-9565163-6-7 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any other information storage or retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the gallery.

Jonathan Clark Fine Art 18 Park Walk Chelsea London SW10 0AQ t. +44 (0) 20 7351 3555 www.jonathanclarkfineart.com





























