Joe Tilson (b. 1928) is credited with helping Popart have its start in London. He worked as a joiner and carpenter from 1944 to 1946 until enlisting in the RAF in 1949. After completing his National Service, he enrolled in St. Martin's School of Art, where he studied under Leon Kossoff, Frank Auerbach, and Bernard Cohen. He later joined the I.C.A. on Dover Street, where he met Eduardo Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, and Reyner Banham. He attended the Royal College of Art in 1952, together artists Richard Smith and Peter Blake. He moved to Rome in 1955 to live and work after receiving the Rome Prize, when he met Joslyn Morton, a student of Marino Marini at the Brera in Milan. In 1956, they got married in Venice from their studio at Casa Frollo on the Giudecca, after living together at Cefalú in Sicily. Following a few months in Catalonia with Peter Blake, they went to London, where Tilson became acquainted with Royal College of Art students Kitaj, Hockney, Boshier, Phillips, Jones, and Caulfield.

He was a teacher at St. Martin's School of Art from 1958 to 1963. He also had teaching positions at King's College in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the School of Visual Arts in New York, the Slade School of Art at University College, London, and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg.

Furthermore, his art is included in both public and private collections across the globe. In 1962, Tilson held his first solo exhibition at London's Marlborough Gallery. Before joining the Waddington Galleries in 1977, he kept exhibiting at their galleries in Rome and New York. 2011 saw a return to the Marlborough Gallery. Joe Tilson was elected to the London Royal Academy of Arts in 1985.