Eduardo Paolozzi was born in Leith, Edinburgh, to Italian parents. During the Second World War he was interned in a camp as a foreign ‘alien’, before serving in the Royal Air Force until 1943. After the War, he studied at Edinburgh College of Art and at the Slade School, London. In 1947, he lived in Paris where he met the sculptor, Alberto Giacometti. Greatly influenced by Dada and Surrealism, he began producing distinctive collages. Returning to London in 1949, Paolozzi taught textile design at the Central School of Art and Design. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was a leading exponent of British Pop Art. Paolozzi represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1960. Retrospectives of his work took place at the Tate Gallery (1971), and the National-Galerie Berlin (1975).He was elected a Royal Academician in 1979, appointed Her Majesty's Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1986, and knighted in 1988. His numerous public commissions include mosaics in Tottenham Court Road Underground Station and Newton, after William Blake, a sculpture for the new British Library (1995).
