Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, R.A. (1924-2005)

The portrait head is a recurring subject throughout Paolozzi's career, from the early collages and fragmented 1950 bronze Mr Cruikshank (Tate Collection) to the later large scale public commissions. Paolozzi's personal collection reflected his fascination with the head; it included, for example, a German ethnological study of heads, alongside a competition to reassemble scramble photo-fit heads, run by Modern Mechanix and Inventions Magazine in 1935-6. Paolozzi believed the competition may have been one starting point, among others, for the Time collage portraits that he made in 1952 and 1953, which are graphic ancestors to his later sculpture that also deconstruct and reconstruct the human head. Rather the heads are layers of cultural experience, comingling with the history of art, which he filters and synthesises to make new truths.
(see R. Spencer, Eduardo Paolozzi: Recurring Themes, London, 1984, p.9)