Eduardo Paolozzi
Made the first Pop collage in 1947, then spent decades welding machines that look like men.
Eduardo Paolozzi was born in Leith in 1924 to Italian parents, was interned as an enemy alien at sixteen while his father, grandfather and uncle drowned when the ship deporting them was torpedoed. He studied at the Slade, and in 1952 showed the Independent Group a collage scrapbook made from American magazines — including I was a Rich Man's Plaything of 1947, with the word POP coming out of a gun, generally taken as the first Pop image. The sculpture that followed cast machine parts into figures; the later work includes the Tottenham Court Road mosaics and the Newton outside the British Library. He died in 2005.
The bronzes are editioned and require identification by cast number and foundry; the early 1950s and 1960s figures are the most sought. Paolozzi was also an outstanding and extremely prolific printmaker, and the screenprint portfolios of the 1960s — As Is When, Universal Electronic Vacuum, Moonstrips Empire News — are major works, valued as complete portfolios well above loose sheets. Collages are unique and are the historically important part of the output. Prints are colour-critical and fade.
If you own a work by Eduardo Paolozzi
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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