EDINBURGH.- Vulcan, the 7.4m high sculpture by Eduardo Paolozzi, at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two) in Edinburgh is undergoing a thorough clean and dusting off. The work is being done whilst the Gallery is temporarily closed to allow the café to be refurbished and a new exhibition installed.

Modern Two reopens on 23 November with the start of Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance, the first major retrospective of the artist’s work to be shown in Scotland and Vulcan will be back on display when the café reopens in December.

Specially commissioned for the Gallery’s Great Hall, Vulcan is a 7.4m high sculpture, spanning two floors of the Gallery, looming above the diners in the café with its head skimming the ceiling of the second floor. A team of skilled conservationists from National Galleries of Scotland is undertaking this epic cleaning task over the course of three days where they will carefully wrap and unwrap different areas in protective layers and use a variety of tools and solutions to restore the Vulcan to its original glory.

Inspired by the Roman god of fire Vulcan and Hephaestus, his Greek counterpart, Paolozzi’s monumental sculpture is constructed of welded steel. Vulcan was lame, which is the reason he is aided by a support here. In Paolozzi's work, Vulcan is shown swinging his hammer and marching across the Great Hall. He is half-man and half-machine - a monument to the modern age.

Born into an Italian-Scots family Sir Eduardo Paolozzi grew up in Leith, Edinburgh, later moving to London. He is considered one of the most versatile sculptors in post-war Britain. Throughout his career, Paolozzi combined his work as an artist with teaching in art colleges in Britain and, for periods, in Germany. He had an enthusiastic and encyclopaedic variety of interests in the world and this was reflected by his frequent changes of media and styles in which he worked.

Studying in Edinburgh and London he also spent two years in Paris from 1947, where he produced enigmatic, bronze sculptures reminiscent of those by Giacometti. During the same period he made a series of Dada and Surrealist-inspired collages in which magazine advertisements, cartoons and machine parts are combined, thus becoming a pioneer of Pop Art. He also continued to develop his printmaking and sculpture. Paolozzi was particularly interested in the mass media and in science and technology.

Originally built as the Dean Orphan Hospital in 1833 by Thomas Hamilton, Modern Two was converted into a gallery by Terry Farrell and Partners in 1999 in order to show the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s extensive collection of Dada and Surrealist art and also to house a generous gift by Paolozzi, in 1994, of a large collection of his work. Modern Two also has a recreation of Paolozzi’s London studio, giving an unprecedented insight into the man and the source of his ideas. The studio is divided into areas for different types of activity: desks for reading and working with paper, shelves of reference books, a large central table for modelling, and working with plaster casts, and a bunk for resting. Paolozzi was interested in a number of themes and by seeing his studio, visitors are able to get an idea of the ways he worked and the inspiration he drew from the world around him.