Born 7 March 1924 – Died 22 April 2005

Italian-Scottish, though nationalities don’t get hyphenated in the UK. The government nonetheless did stick him in an internment camp for being a ‘potential enemy alien’, along with all other men of Italian descent, and of course German and Austrian descent. Not surprisingly, Paolozzi had little affection for English politicians, which of course only made him more Scottish.

A compulsive forager, Paolozzi truly loved discarded junk and especially the kind found in dry docks and junkyards. He surrounded himself with the stuff and liked nothing better than welding and bolting bits and pieces together into a sci fi junky’s wet dream – eerie but touchingly vulnerable organic-machine humans. This well before the Lee Major’s Bionic Man and the current crop of Olympic blade runners.

Along with junk Paolozzi had a thing for popular culture and science. Towards the end of WWII he lived in Paris and gathered magazines from American ex-servicemen. Comics, film magazines and advertisements fueled his work. Today his work is considered a key lead-up to the 1950s Pop Art movement, the rebellious effort to turn everyday mass-produced objects into art.

On a visit to California in the 1960s he apparently avoided the art galleries and museums, slumming instead in Disneyland, Paramount Studios, University of California’s computer center, Stanford’s linear particle accelerator, a Douglas aircraft plant and a GM assembly line. Combing, taking apart, and recombining it all was his art.