Allen Jones, born in 1937, is one of the most significant British artists on the international stage.
As a fellow student of R.B. Kitaj, Peter Phillips, and David Hockey at the Royal College of Art in 1961, he participated in the development of a new attitude towards figuration which became a major stepping stone in the history of Pop Art.
The formation of his individual voice was helped by an extended stay in New York where his depiction of the figure became more aggressive in response to the brash culture of the city. By 1969 this progressive stylization of the female figure had culminated in a series of life sized fibreglass figures representing women in boots and corsets posing as furniture objects. This permeated his later excursions into set design, dance, and sport imagery that exploited the tension between figuration and gestural abstraction.
Since 1980 he has also created many large-scale sculptures, using cut steel in very different styles for a number of public commissions in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and St. Louis, Missouri.
For the past 40 years he has taught at several universities in the US, Canada, and Germany. He is a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London and an Emeritus Trustee of the British Museum. His work is constantly being exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide and is included in many important international public and private collections.