Eduardo Paolozzi was born in Scotland in 1924 of Italian parents. Having graduated from St Martin's School of Art and the Slade School, he worked in Paris in the late 40s. On returning to London he shared a studio with the sculptor William Turnbull. From 1951 he undertook many public art commissions in Britain and abroad, including the large sculpture of Newton after Blake for the new British Library.

Paolozzi possesses diverse technical skills. These are reflected in his complex sculptural constructions and reliefs developed from eclectic sources. His influences range from Classicism to Constructivism, Cubism to Futurism, and are a mixture of the organic and the mechanical, the representational and the abstract.