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Eduardo Paolozzi: Lots of Pictures – Lots of Fun

The founding father of British Pop Art spent a year living and working in Berlin in the mid-1970s, giving the Berlinische Galerie an excuse for this colourful spotlight. It's on through May 28.

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The founding father of British Pop Art spent a year living and working in Berlin in the mid-1970s, giving the Berlinische Galerie an excuse for this colourful spotlight. Taken from a comprehensive retrospective  by London’s Whitechapel Gallery, the exhibition focuses on his more experimental and idiosyncratic works up to the 1970s. Paolozzi’s infamous Bunk! collages are shown in facsimilie and satisfy what you would expect of a Pop Artist, colourful compositions from readymade images. Viewing them alongside more sombre collages from the 1940s, it is enlightening tosee the roots of what became such a famous artisticmovement. Bombastic works on paper from the 1950s, 60s and 70s highlight how influential Paolozzi’s aesthetic was, and the numerous sculptures on display demonstrate his enduring obsession with machines and versatility to adopt new production techniques. Highlights include the animated film Mr Machine – A Film for Eduardo Paolozzi and the room covering his move to abstraction during his year in Berlin. A black-and-white mural he painted on the corner of Kurfürstenstraße and Budapester Straße is recreated on the gallery wall– unnecessarily, as it turns out. The bank that’s been covering the mural was recently torn down, leaving it visible for the first time since 1985; go see it before the area’s turned into an office block. It’s a shame this isn’t the entire original retrospective, ending rather abruptly in the 1970s, however, as a survey of the given period it is a fascinating document of a prolific thinker and maker of his time.

Through May 28