Born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1926, he arrived in England in 1939 a refugee from Nazi Europe. During the sixties and seventies he developed the theory and practice of Auto-Destructive Art, an art that was proposed as the equivalent or the metaphor of destructive forces within society. In 1996 Metzger organized the International Destruction of Art Symposium (DIAS), which attracted Viennese shareholders and various artists of the Fluxus movement as well as poets, musicians and psychologists.