Euan Uglow was born in 1932 in London. As a child, he lived in Tulse Hill in south London, where his father was an accountant. Uglow went to the local grammar school in Tulse Hill, Strand School. Afterwards he studied at Camberwell School of Art from 1948 to 1950, during a time when Camberwell students studied under artists such as Victor Pasmore, Lawrence Gowing, John Minton, Kenneth Martin and William Coldstream. Uglow was influenced by Coldstream whilst at Camberwell, although he believed that another tutor there, the painter Claude Rogers, was more significant in his development. Nonetheless, when Coldstream left Camberwell to teach at the Slade School of Art in 1951, Uglow followed him, and remained a student at the Slade until 1954.