Bark Cloth
Eduardo Paolozzi
British, 1924–2005
c.1954
A screen-printed cotton textile in which Paolozzi repeats handlike, schematic motifs—clocks, gears, letters, and abstract signs—turning found mechanical and ethnographic imagery into a bark-cloth-like pattern to explore how everyday images become design.
You first notice a restless, high-contrast maze of black lines and symbols laid out in a foursquare repeat, where dense, gestural marks read at once like machine diagrams and hand-drawn ornament, creating a rhythmic, almost talkative surface.
Made in the 1950s, the piece bridges postwar collage and industrial design, anticipating Pop’s use of commonplace imagery and demonstrating how print and textile processes could bring modern art into domestic and commercial contexts.
Medium
Screen-printed cotton
Dimensions
45 1/2 × 50 1/4" (115.6 × 127.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Jill A. Wiltse and H. Kirk Brown III
Accession
1095.2015
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
