Metallised dreams and the promise of technology in Eduardo Paolozzi’s first screen print

In 1963 Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) published ‘Metallization of a Dream’, a screen print featuring a pair of enigmatic mechanical forms in a domestic interior. Produced with Kelpra Studio in an edition of forty, it was his first fine-art screen print and one of the earliest editioned screen prints in Britain. This article traces the work’s evolution from Paolozzi’s first engagements with printmaking and his changing ideas about machines and technology. It argues that the print was shaped by Paolozzi’s involvement with the techno-centric Independent Group, his time with the pioneering printmakers Hammer Prints and his visit to rapidly modernising Hamburg just before the print’s creation. The article shows how it draws on the ideas and imagery of Futurism, Surrealism and Dada to present its human-machine hybrids in an approachable light, and argues that the print marks a turning point in Paolozzi’s treatment of technology: away from the post-war cynicism of his brutalist figures of the 1950s, towards a more sanguine view of the future in which technology is part of the familiar present, an optimism that faded in later works. By creating ‘Metallization of a Dream’ and collaborating with Kelpra, Paolozzi helped establish screen printing as a recognised form of artistic production and inspired a new generation of artists to embrace a medium still in its infancy.