Eduardo Paolozzi
Born 1924, Leith, Scotland. Died 2005
The son of Italian parents, Paolozzi went to Edinburgh College of Art in 1943 and then the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1944-47. He lived in Paris from 1947-50. He taught textile design at the Central School of Art in London until 1955, when he went to St Martin's College of Art in London to teach sculpture. From 1960-62 he was Visiting Professor at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst, Hamburg, and at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968. From 1968-89 he lectured in ceramics at the Royal College of Art in London and in the 1970s he was also a visiting professor in Cologne, Hamburg and Munich.
His work was represented at all the major international exhibitions of contemporary art including the Venice Biennale in 1951, the Sao Paulo Bienial in 1957 and Documenta Kassel in 1959. He had a retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London in 1971 and a 70th birthday exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1994.
He presented the Krazy Kat Archive to the University of St Andrews in 1973 and was Artist-in-Residence there in 1979. He has undertaken numerous public commissions since first working on a fountain for the Festival of Britain in 1951. They include the aluminium relief doors to the new Hunterian Gallery at the University of Glasgow in 1976, and Tottenham Court Road Underground Station in 1986.
He was elected a Royal Academician in 1979 and knighted in 1988.