THEY have become an icon of both the London Underground and modern British art, and now the original design for one of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi’s mosaics at Tottenham Court Road Tube station is to go on sale.
The Leith-born artist and sculptor designed the mosaics for the Northern and Central Line platforms at the station in the early 1980s. The original design drawings by the influential “pop” artist will be sold by Lyon & Turnbull auctioneers on Thursday in Edinburgh.
The design for the mosaics, which Lyon & Turnbull value at between £20,000 and £30,000, was commissioned in 1979 by London Transport. The glass mosaics, designed to link the interconnecting spaces of the station, were completed in 1986, covering some 950 sq m Paolozzi is generally reckoned to have been Scotland’s greatest modern artist and sculptor.
He was the son of Italian immigrants, and was 16 when his father, grandfather and uncle were killed when a Nazi U-boat sank the SS Arandora Star, which was taking newly interned Italians to Canada on July 2, 1940. Paolozzi himself was interned in Saughton Prison at the time.
After producing many paintings and graphic work, it was as a sculptor that Paolozzi latterly became most famous – he was appointed Her Majesty’s Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1986 and knighted by her three years later – and there are numerous examples of his work in his native land.
He lived most of his life in London, however, and died there in 2005 at the age of 81, four years after he suffered a stroke.
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art has devoted a whole studio to his work to which Paolozzi donated a large part of his collection.
According to the auctioneers: “Having suffered over the years, the mosaics were painstakingly restored in 2015 and, while 95 per cent were retained in place, the remainder were removed and are now held in the collection of the Edinburgh College of Art where Paolozzi was a visiting professor and where he had himself studied in the 1940s.
“Tottenham Court Road sits at the epicentre of one of the most culturally diverse and historically significant areas of London, between Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury and Soho.
“These streets were the haunt of such writers as Tom Paine, Vanessa Bell, Virginia Wolf, Dylan Thomas, and George Orwell, and artists including Constable, Augustus John, Colquhoun and Macbryde, Francis Bacon (a friend of Paolozzi’s), and others too numerous to mention.
“Here, too, was the centre of London’s jazz community and its buzzing hub of Denmark Street and musicians from Britten and Bechet to Pink Floyd. Thus on the left of this work we find saxophones and musical notes. Cameras and electrical circuits mirror the technical stores of Tottenham Court Road and Fitzrovia, while stylised Egyptian and Assyrian motifs reference the nearby British Museum.
“A soaring butterfly or moth is an allusion to Paolozzi’s recollections of the decoration of a long-vanished Turkish Baths. At the same time, the motifs are constantly self-referential, with powerful and iconic imagery from his past work – tribal masks, spacecraft and robots.
“Cogs and film reels jostle with what could be pinball machines or jukeboxes in an exuberant evocation of the life of this unique locale. Using collage in a sense to mimic the pain-staking method of the eventual mosaic construction, the artist summons up in a single piece of work the essential meaning of this extraordinary and vitally important commission.
“It is not perhaps going too far to say that it can be seen as an encapsulation of everything that made Paolozzi one of the greatest British artists of the 20th century.”
Charlotte Riordan, picture specialist at Lyon & Turnbull said: “In his designs for the mosaics – a key example of which, the definitive flat design for the Central Line platform, is now offered for sale – Paolozzi draws on his knowledge and understanding of popular culture and iconic symbolism. The concept united his abiding interest in the culture of mechan-isation and his empathy with the station’s historic context and its geographical location.
“Having taught at the nearby Central School of Art in the 1950s, Paolozzi had retained a broad, deep-rooted and affectionate understanding of the local area and its diverse communities.”
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here