Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, R.A.

Commissioned by Sir Terence Conran for Habitat, Wallingford, 1974-1994

Wallingford, Habitat Playground, until 1994;
Wakefield, Bretton Hall, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Eduardo Paolozzi: A Birthday Celebration, August - October 1994, then on long-term loan until 2010.

Robin Spencer (ed.), Eduardo Paolozzi: Writings and Interviews, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, pp.243-4, 305.

All three works are structurally sound. Their surfaces bear scratches and abrasions and signs of weathering inherent to being exhibited outside. The U-bend has some signs of rust around the screw holes where the work was attached to the ground. Some occasional signs of oxidation and dirt to the works, notable along the bottom. They may benefit from a light clean, otherwise they appears in good overall condition. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present lot.
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In his exhibition at the Tate Gallery in 1971, Paolozzi showed two racks of nine aluminium ‘bombs’, (one group unpainted, one white), a yellow bomb with a twist in its tail, and an unpainted bomb with a bent nose, Jackanory (cat. nos.66-7, reproduced). The bombs were the principal source for Yantra and Manuk. The upturned ‘U’ element was also included in Paolozzi’s sculpture WASTE – Cloud Atomic Laboratory, an aluminium replica of a builder’s skip containing castings from his ‘vocabulary of aluminium forms’, which was also shown at the Tate Gallery in 1971 (cat. no.68), and in the exhibition British Sculptors 72 at the Royal Academy in 1972 as Thunder and Lightning with Flies and Jack Kennedy. Two versions of the sculpture were subsequently developed, one of which is in the Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan, the other in the Haus der Kunst, Munich. The catalogue of the Milan exhibition,  where the first version was exhibited in 1976, contains a statement by Paolozzi  about the concept of waste in art, which is reprinted in Eduardo Paolozzi: Writings and Interviews.

Robin Spencer