Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) was born in Leith, Scotland to Italian parents, and studied at Edinburgh College of Art, St. Martin's School of Art and then finally the Slade School of Fine Art. During the late 1940s Paolozzi moved to Paris, where he met Dadaists Jean Arp and Tristan Tzara, and the sculptors Constantin Brancusi and Alberto Giacometti amongst many others. He returned to London in 1949, and taught at the Central School of Art and Design. During this period Paolozzi became an important member of the Independent Group, a loosely formed group of artists, architects, sculptors, academics and critics based around the Institute of Contemporary Art, and from where British Pop emerged. In 1956 Paolozzi collaborated on a section of the seminal This is Tomorrow exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, organised by Richard Hamilton, John McHale, Alison and Peter Smithson and curator Bryan Robertson amongst others. Arguably Paolozzi's most significant contributions to British Pop were his collages, constructed from pieces of magazines, advertisements and typeface. Throughout the 1960s and beyond Paolozzi received numerous public commissions in Britain and throughout Europe, held various professorships in Germany and his work was acquired by numerous public collections. He was made a CBE in 1968, an RA in 1979 and knighted in 1989. He died in 2005. During the 1950s, Paolozzi's sculpture was concerned with the overlap between man and machine, between present and future, between flesh and metal. Exhibitions such as This is Tomorrow (1956) and Man, Machine and Motion (1955) explored the liminal space between the human, the industrial and the technological, and the possibilities that an ever approaching future held for the human form. A fascination with popular culture representations of cyborgs, automata, cybernetics, robots and hybrids proclaimed that a terrifying dehumanisation of the figure was the inevitable consequence of modern advancements. Like Richard Hamilton, who had trained as an electrical engineer, Paolozzi was enamoured with industrial processes and manufacturing, collaborating during the 1960s with industrial engineering firms. 'Figure' is part of a series of sculptures that Paolozzi constructed during the mid-1950s concerned with the problem of the human form and figuration in art, politics and philosophy. 'Figure' (1956) is cast in bronze, a traditional sculptural medium, but Paolozzi's treatment of the bronze speaks of a very modern era. The surface of the bronze is pock-marked, scarred and scored in a seemingly violent attempt to disfigure the form. Although 'Figure' has recognisable human features - legs, arms, torso - it appears barely human, with a surface brutalised to near abstraction. In 1957 Paolozzi produced one of his most famous works from the period, the monumental Cyclops, purchased by the Tate. This sculpture, part mythological, part mechanical, barely human, has a surface with debris and detritus from industrial manufacturing impressed into its surface such as broken machine parts. Paolozzi's casting technique has been compared to his collage practice - a process of building up wax and adding objects. This sculpture has been seen as an ironic presentation of man in the nuclear age, when humankind is threatened by the technology of his own creation. Alongside the allusion to a dystopian future, the soldier-like appearance of 'Figure' also looks backwards to Fascism and militarisation. Paolozzi briefly served in the British army, but was also sent by his Fascist supporting father to a Fascist training camp in Italy and Paolozzi remained fascinated by the paraphernalia of the military, evident in the marching soldier-esque pose of 'Figure'. The visible hollow core of 'Figure' suggests a metal armour with no figure to protect, a soldier that has become a metallic machine, a survivor of nuclear annihilation.