British sculptor, commercial designer, director and writer of Italian descent. He studied at the Edinburgh College of Art (1943), at St Martin's School of Art (1944) and at the Slade School of Fine Art (1945-47). His first works were impregnated with a strong non-western cultural influence. He held his first one-man show at the Mayor Gallery in London in 1947, which also marked his move to Paris where he stayed until 1949 and where he met artists such as Arp, Braque, Brancusi, Giacometti, Hélion, Léger and Tzara. At the end of the 40s he produced various sculptures, inspired by Surrealism, of biomorphic forms and which show he was familiar with the work of Giacometti. Another of these sources of inspiration was the Art Brut of Dubuffet. Between 1949 and 1955, he taught at the Central School of Art and Design in London and, in the 60s, he experimented with printing techniques through which he produced a considerable number of works. Between 1959 and 1977, he took part in Documenta 2, 4 and 6, in Kassel and, in 1960, at the Venice Biennale. In 1964, he had a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and, in 1985, at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. In the 80s, he produced various public sculptures and collages with the common theme of the human head.
