George Claude Leon Underwood (25 December 1890 – 9 October 1975) was a British artist, although primarily known as a sculptor, printmaker and painter, he was also an influential teacher and promotor of African art.

[9][10] Underwood's duties on the Western Front included going into No man's land to make detailed drawings of trees which were later replaced with metal replicas used by military observers.

[10][12] After the war Underwood attended the Slade School of Art for a year's refresher course and in 1920 received the British Prix de Rome but chose not to go to Italy, instead using the grant to travel elsewhere later in the decade.

[3][14] After returning to England in late 1928 Underwood made a number of paintings on Mexican themes, including imagined portraits of Montezuma II and Hernán Cortés, the latter holding a stone heart in front of a ruined castle.

[3][7][9][14][15][19] From 1932 to 1934, Underwood made a series of sculptures of dancing figures including Herald of New Day, the plaster cast of which is now in the Tate collection.

[22] Underwood's 1937 bronze sculpture of King George VI, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, had originally been intended to be of Edward VIII but was reworked after the abdication of December 1936.

[4] During the School's existence, its students had included Henry Moore, Eileen Agar, Gertrude Hermes, Blair Hughes-Stanton, Raymond Coxon, Edna Ginesi and Roland Vivian Pitchforth.

[3][9][23][21] These included a study of the Ife and Benin heads, Bronzes of West Africa which showed a pioneering appreciation of their artistic significance and his understanding of their relationship to the culture and technology from which they originated.

[9][14] His access to the cave paintings of Altamira in Spain ignited his "New Philosophy" with regard to this interrelationship of the expressiveness and technology of primitive art.

[7][24] In 1961 Underwood was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Sculptors and further recognition followed in 1969 when the first full-scale retrospective of his work was held at The Minories in Colchester.

[3][7] The art historian John Rothenstein wrote in the introduction to that exhibition that Underwood was "..the most versatile artist at work in Britain today..".