The figure of Eduardo Paolozzi towers over the contemporary art world, much as his 1990s seven-metre tall sculpture ‘Vulcan’ does in its permanent residence in Modern Two’s café named after him. The Leith-born pop auteur’s presence is similarly embedded into Edinburgh’s cityscape, be it through public sculptures, the locally brewed beer that takes his name, Leith Athletic’s football shirt, or the magnificent recreation of his studio in Modern Two.

The latter is a perfect conduit for this centenary exhibition, which rolls out 60 works that not only channel the throwaway detritus of Paolozzi’s collages, but show how his ultra-modern designs made their mark beyond the gallery. This is spread across two ground-floor rooms, a library and a couple of corridor showcases. The first room, Paris & London, shows off 1950s collages, sculptures, screenprints and experiments with ink. The second room, Pattern & Print, leaps forward a couple of decades by way of tapestries, screenprints and plates. The library lays out fragments from his mosaic for Tottenham Court Road tube station.

The result is a multi-coloured machine-age selection box of imagery that animated its surroundings beyond gallery walls to become part of our everyday experience. This gives a glimpse into how Paolozzi mixed and matched the pop-culture clutter he was immersed in, defining its time while pointing to the brave new world ahead. 

Paolozzi At 100, National Galleries Of Scotland: Modern Two, Edinburgh, until Sunday 21 April.