The founder of British Pop - art, Paolozzi trained at the Edinburgh College of Art (1943), St Martin's School of Art (1944), and at the Slade School of Art (1944 - 1947), before working in Paris, France (1947 - 1949) where he met and became influenced by a number of famous artists, including the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti,
the former Dadaist and Surrealist Jean Arp, the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, and the Cubists Georges Braque and Fernand Léger.