Eduardo Paolozzi was a British sculptor, collagist, printmaker, filmmaker and writer. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland into a family of Italian immigrants. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art, Saint Martin's School of Art and at the Slade School of Fine Art where he studied sculpture. In 1947 after graduating from the Slade, Paolozzi moved to Paris where he met notable figures including Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, Georges Braque and Fernand Léger.
In 1949 he moved back to London where he set up a studio in Chelsea. Paolozzi taught at a number of institutions, including the Central School of Art, the Royal College of Art, and in Cologne and Munich in Germany. He was a founder of the Independent Group, regarded as the precursor to the Pop Art movements.
He regularly worked in printmaking and experimented with collage, combining casts of random everyday objects that interested him to make sculpture and reliefs. His later work blended the incongruous juxtapositions of Surrealism with his interest in images of modernity and the human form.
Paolozzi was awarded the CBE in 1968 and was elected to the Royal Academy in 1979. He was knighted in 1988. Paolozzi's work is held in many collections across the world, although most notably the National Galleries of Scotland.