Paolozzi at Large in Edinburgh: Artwork and Creative Responses

EDUARDO PAOLOZZI (1924–2005) was one of the greatest Scottish and European artists of the 20th century. He was a prolific sculptor

and printmaker as well as an inspirational teacher. His was an exceptional talent, drawing on culture in all its forms, from classical myths to comics and ephemera. Most would agree he was the originator of the Pop Art movement.

He was born in Edinburgh into an immigrant Italian family whose origins were in Viticuso, a comune (municipality) in the Province of Frosinone in the Italian region Lazio, about 130 kilometres southeast of Rome. They ran an ice cream and confectionary shop in Albert Street, Leith. There was no ‘silver spoon’ or patronage available, only ingenuity and dedication.

Despite having lived and worked in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London, Paris, Berlin, New York and Osaka, his native city is where you will find not only some of his most arresting work but also a demonstration of the breadth of his creativity: from colossal bronzes to subtle stained glass. Although some of his work is archived in the University of Edinburgh, or held privately, most is displayed as public art or exhibited in the National Galleries.

CHRISTINE DE LUCA writes in English and Shetlandic, her mother tongue. She was appointed Edinburgh’s Makar for 2014–2017. Besides several children’s stories and one novel, she has had seven poetry collections and four bilingual volumes published (French, Italian, Icelandic and Norwegian). She’s participated in many festivals here and abroad. Her poems have been selected four times for the Best Scottish Poems of the Year (2006, 2010, 2013 and 2015) for The Scottish Poetry Library online anthologies.

CARLO PIROZZI is currently a Teaching Fellow at the Italian Department of the University of Edinburgh. His main research interests are language teaching methodologies, Diaspora Studies (in particular, Italian migration to Scotland), contemporary Italian poetry and literature and the visual and performing arts. He is the coordinator of the ‘Italo-Scottish Research Cluster’ at the University of Edinburgh. In addition to this, he initiates and develops creative interdisciplinary projects involving universities, public and private cultural institutions, as well as collaborations between artists from Scotland and Italy.

For Luath Press, he has published Like Leaves in Autumn. Responses to the War Poetry of Giuseppe Ungaretti (co-edited with Katherine Lockton, Edinburgh: Luath Press, 2015). Other relevant publications are a photographic diary of the journey of an Italo-Scot travelling from Edinburgh to Cassino, in Italy, after the Second World War, No-Where-Next | War-Diaspora-Origin. Dominic Scappaticcio. A Journey, 1946–1947 (edited by Federica G Pedriali and Carlo Pirozzi, Ravenna: Longo, 2015); and a recent reprint of powerful novel-memoir Wandering Minstrel written by an Italo-Scot, Eugenio D’Agostino, under the pseudonym Cagliardo Coraggioso (edited by Carlo Pirozzi, UK: Amazon, 2018; first edition 1938, Oxford University Press).

In 2014, he won a Special Jury Prize in the Edinburgh International Film Festival’s Short Film Challenge for the film Coral Red, which he

wrote and co-directed.