For Finlay, the French Revolution represented not only a moment of enormous political rupture but one of aesthetic change, signalling a great moral as well as political leap that encompassed extraordinary advances in secular democracy and social progress. Revolution provided a rich subject; he first received international attention for his guillotine installation A View to the Temple at Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and thereafter the guillotine became one of the most enduring elements of his iconography. 

In 1961 he founded the Wild Hawthorn Press with Jessie McGuffie and within a few years had established himself internationally as Britain's foremost concrete poet. His publications continue to play an important role in the dissemination of his work as a visual artist. As a sculptor, he worked collaboratively in a wide range of materials, having his concepts executed as stone-carvings, as constructed objects and neon lighting. From the mid-sixties Finlay lived and worked at Stonypath, south-west of Edinburgh, where he transformed the surrounding rural acres into a unique garden and life's work: Little Sparta. Ian Hamilton Finlay died 27 March 2006, aged 80.

www.littlesparta.co.uk

www.ianhamiltonfinlay.com/