Sir Eduardo Paolozzi

Catalogue entry

P01976 [from] CONDITIONAL PROBABILITY MACHINE 1970 [P01961-P01984; P11003; complete]

24 sheets inscribed ‘Eduardo Paolozzi 1970’ bottom right and ‘9/24’. I sheet (cancelled proof) inscribed ‘Eduardo Paolozzi 1970’ bottom right and ‘⅓’
25 etchings, printed and published by Editions Alecto, various sizes
Presented anonymously through the Friends of the Tate 1980
Lit: op.cit., nos.63–86

This portfolio was the first for which Paolozzi used photogravure. The source material, drawn from his own stocks of magazines and science journals, was photographed and transferred to etching plates. The set is divided into four sections of six prints each: ‘Secrets of Life - The Human Machine and How it Works’, ‘Manikins for Destruction’, ‘Pages from the Aerospace Medical Library’, and ‘From Genot to Unimate’. The first section (titled from a book Paolozzi was given in Paris in 1948) deals with the human body and methods of explaining its functions. ‘Manikins for Destruction’ deals with traffic accident simulations, and ‘Pages from the Aerospace Medical Library’ with aerospace experiments. The last section presents robots, real or as toys and humanoid or purely mechanical.

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1980-82: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1984

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