Artist Database

Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi, born 1924, was a Scottish artist of Italian descent, born in Leith, Edinburgh. He studied at Edinburgh College of Art, briefly at Saint Martin's School of Art, and at the Slade School of Fine Art, before working in Paris from 1947 to 1949, where he met Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, Georges Braque and Fernand Léger.

On his return to London he established a studio in Chelsea and, in 1952, co-founded the Independent Group, widely regarded as a precursor to the Pop Art movement. He is considered one of the pioneers of British Pop Art. His practice spanned sculpture, printmaking, collage, ceramics, film and design, and included major public commissions such as the mosaics at Tottenham Court Road tube station and sculptures at Euston Station.

He was appointed CBE in 1968, elected a Royal Academician in 1979, made Her Majesty's Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1986, and knighted in 1989. In 1994 he gave a substantial body of his work to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, later housed at the Dean Gallery in Edinburgh. He died in London in 2005.