Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, the Scottish sculptor, collagist, printmaker and film-maker, was one of the most influential artists in postwar Britain. Widely esteemed as one of the fathers of British Pop Art, he left an imposing legacy of monumental civic sculptures and made substantial donations of his works and his collections of popular ephemera to leading museums.

Paris, where Paolozzi made his home from 1947 to 1949, proved an ideal breeding ground for his art. Many of the great artists of the inter-war years were still working there, and he was able to meet sculptors such as Brancusi and Giacometti. When he returned to London in 1949, he quickly made his name with lumpen cast-bronze sculptures of the human figure that owed something to the example of French sculptors of the period. Paolozzi went on to become a tutor in ceramics at the Royal College of Art, London from 1968 to 1990. Paolozzi had an extraordinary feeling for objects, through which he suggested his awe about the world in all its variousness.

After his retrospective at the Tate Gallery in 1971, major exhibitions of his work were held at almost every other important institution in London, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Serpentine Gallery.