Gustav Metzger was born in Nuremberg, Germany on 10th April 1926 to Polish-Jewish parents and arrived in Britain on the Kindertransport in 1939. Most of his immediate family perished in the Holocaust. From 1945-53, he studied art in Cambridge, London, Antwerp and Oxford - for much of this time, associated with the artist David Bomberg.

By 1958, Metzger was becoming heavily involved in anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist movements and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In 1960, he was a founder-member of the Committee of 100 and this led to a short imprisonment in 1961 with Bertrand Russell for encouraging mass non-violent civil disobedience.

Metzger's political activism provided the foundation for his first artist manifesto in 1959, titled 'Auto-destructive Art’, which he described 'as a desperate last-minute subversive political weapon...an attack on the capitalist system...(an attack also on art dealers and collectors who manipulate modern art for profit.)' Auto-destructive art - a public art form - sought to provide a mirror of a social and political system that Metzger felt was progressing towards total obliteration.

At the heart of his practice, which spanned over 65 years, are a series of constantly opposing yet interdependent forces, such as destruction and creation.