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Eduardo Paolozzi experienced a deep sense of personal identification with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose exile from his native Vienna and cultural isolation mirrored Paolozzi’s feeling that he, a child of Italian parents raised in Scotland, was also an outsider. Paolozzi commented, “I wanted to identify myself with Wittgenstein through the prints, and make a kind of combined autobiography.” Paolozzi, who was fascinated with American popular and consumer culture from his childhood, made his first trip to America in 1958 and spent extended periods there during the 1960s. But he became disillusioned with the American dream in the era of the Vietnam War and cut short his tenure as a visiting professor of sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968. Wittgenstein in New York relates to the philosopher’s visit in 1939 and contains elements of the apocalyptical imagery that the artist developed in other work of the period.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016