Born in Southampton in 1937, Allen Jones studied painting and lithography at Hornsey College of Art, London between 1955 and 1959 and attended the Royal College of Art from 1959, where he was a contemporary of Patrick Caulfield, David Hockney, Derek Boshier, Peter Phillips and R.B. Kitaj. His first solo exhibition in 1963 was at Tooth's Gallery in London where he continued to show until 1970.

He taught lithography at Croydon School of Art between 1961 and 1963 and drawing at Chelsea School of Art in 1964. He has also taught at the Hochschule fur Bildene Kunste in Hamburg, the Hochschule fur Kunste in Berlin, the University of South Florida, the University of California, and the Banff School of Art, Alberta.

His early work has a strong psychological element, inspired by reading Nietzsche, Freud and Jung, and showed signs of his later interest in the fusing of masculine and feminine. In 1963 he won the Prix de Jeunes Artistes which took him to Paris, and the following year he travelled to New York. It was there that Hockney drew Jones's attention to commercial fetishist imagery, which was to become a major influence on his work, opening up a development of three-dimensional illusionism and extreme eroticism. Two notable examples which borrow overtly from the world of commercialised sex are his hyper-realist sculptures of 1969, Table Sculpture and Hat Stand.

In 1968 he published his first book Figures, to be followed by Projects in 1971 and Waitresses in 1972. In 1970 he designed sets and costumes for the landmark erotic revue O Calcutta! in London, and the television spectacular Manner wir Kommen in West Germany. In 1972 he created garments for The Body Show at the ICA and costumes for the Theatre Royal, Stratford, East London. He has also designed posters and murals.

But despite his success in such varied fields, he is first and foremost a painter, sculptor and printmaker, and has been a central figure in his generation of British artists. His work is represented in public collections which include the Tate Gallery and MOMA, New York. He has carried out commissions for the City of London, the British Airport Authority at Heathrow Airport, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, the International Gardens Festival, Liverpool and several fashionable London restaurants. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1981, where his work is regularly to be seen. A major exhibition was held at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in 1979, subsequently touring to London, Sunderland, Baden-Baden and Bielefeld.

Publications include Allen Jones Sculptures by Victor Arwas, Art & Design (UK), 1987.