About the Work

This original sculptural work by the multidisciplinary Scottish artist Sir Eduardo Paolozzi features four ivory-plaster cogs mounted vertically atop a custom artifact stand in a 2x2 staggered formation. He produced the majority of his vast body of plaster works between the 1940s and 1960s, creating an extensive series of plaster cogs between 1951 and 1954. During this period, Paolozzi moved away from surrealist influences to explore mechanical and industrial forms. He found himself surrounded by the industrial debris left by World War II, witnessing society rebuild itself from fragments. He drew on this environment for inspiration, creating works that invoked industrial imagery and which examined the tension between destruction and innovation, as well as the increasingly complex relationship between humanity and machinery.

Paolozzi's series of plaster cogs features small-scale sculptures in gear-like forms inspired by the mechanical parts he frequently salvaged from scrapyards. These cogs reflect the artist's engagement with post-war art, which rejected traditional techniques in favor of a more brutalist approach that embraced unconventional materials and sources of inspiration. These industrial cogs became a recurring theme throughout his career. And though he distanced himself from surrealism, he referenced its earlier influence through cog motifs he incorporated into his many hybrid human-machine depictions.

Paolozzi often used plaster to create small models of much larger bronze and cast-metal works, which served as preliminary studies documenting the evolution of his artistic vision. He favored plaster for this purpose due to its immediacy and versatility, which allowed him to develop and refine ideas rapidly. The material's softness and malleability enabled him to iterate extensively, and he'd sometimes produce over 100 plaster studies for a single concept. This resulting body of plaster works provides valuable insight into Paolozzi's creative process, revealing stages of experimentation, revision, and development. Paolozzi regarded these small plaster works not as finished objects, but as integral components of an ongoing investigation.