Born in Scotland, William Scott moved with his family to Enniskillen in Northern Ireland at the age of ten. There he started art classes before enrolling at the Belfast School of Art and then taking up at place at the Royal College of Art in London. His paintings have become some of the most recognisable of the 20th century British artists and have been shown in major solo and group museum exhibitions. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1958. “I am an abstract artist”, Scott said, “in the sense that I abstract. I cannot be called non-figurative while I am still interested in the modern magic of space, primitive sex forms, the sensual and the erotic, disconcerting contours, the things of life.”