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Sandra Blow1970 Sandra Blow abstract watercolour, signed1970
1970
About the Item
Sandra Blow (British, 1925-2006)
Abstract, 1970
Watercolour
Signed with estate stamp (lower left)
11 x 7 in. (28 x 18 cm.)
The late British artist Sandra Betty Blow (1925-2006) came to prominence in the 1950s as a pioneer of the British Abstract movement. Sandra enjoyed a prolific career spanning several decades, producing unique and emotive works incorporating rhythmic and constructed forms with a liberal use of colour.
Sandra was born in London but spent most of her childhood recovering from Scarlet Fever at her grandparents’ fruit farm in Kent. It was here that she discovered her passion for painting. Sandra enrolled at Saint Martin's School of Art between 1941-1946, and then shortly after the Second World War, the Royal Academy Schools, 1946-1947. The artist later studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome where she became acquainted with Italian visual artist Alberto Burri, a soon-to-be partner and lifelong influence on her style and approach. Upon her return to London in 1950, despite her youth, Blow began to assert herself in the artsphere and, before long, was spearheading the nation’s Abstract art movement.
Sandra introduced a new and expressive abstraction to the British arts scene and was one of the earliest and most original female artists challenging the "'macho' cult" surrounding abstract art in the 50s and 60s. Her informality and experimental use of cheap, discarded materials such as sawdust, sackcloth and plaster in collage and on canvas was met with intrigue and adoration. The painter’s original approach was rooted in rustic and visceral earthy textures. Her later works were stylised with a 60s optimism and panache, exchanging pastoral palettes for bright, bold and contrasting colours such as in abstract silkscreen print Interaction, (2000).
Sandra’s relentless approach to printmaking and painting has been celebrated worldwide. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, she regularly exhibited with Gimpel Fils, a leading London gallery at the time. Since, Sandra’s oeuvre has been displayed and enjoyed internationally at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Venice Biennale, Italy, and more. Tate St Ives and the Royal Academy of Arts in London have held retrospectives of Sandra’s work, now treasured additions to the Arts Council Collection and Tate collection.
- Creator:Sandra Blow (1925-2006, British)
- Creation Year:1970
- Dimensions:Height: 1,975 in (5,016.5 cm)Width: 30 in (76.2 cm)Depth: 1 in (2.54 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:In good overall condition.
- Gallery Location:Petworth, GB
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU540310482692
Sandra Blow
Blow was at the forefront of the post-war avant-garde from an extremely young age, catalysed by studying in Rome and taking Alberto Burri as her lover in 1947. On her return to London, the influential 1950s dealers Gimpel Fils held her first exhibition in 1951; she exhibited with Paolozzi, Pasmore and Adams in Rome in 1952; and had her first solo exhibition in New York a few years later, before being chosen to exhibit in the British Pavillion at the Venice Biennale alongside William Scott, Alan Davie and Kenneth Armitage in 1958. For Sandra Blow, and so many others of her generation, European art was the greatest influence. It was contemporary Italian art that was a foremost influence on Blow’s works of this period, particularly due to her close friendship with Alberto Burri. Unlike Lanyon, Heron and Tilson who travelled to Italy in the 1950s, Blow was studying with Burri in Italy in the late Forties. She travelled throughout Italy and Spain and discovered at first hand the European culture. While Blow did not produce work of her own in Italy, she learnt a great deal from the Italian master of "art informal". Burri worked in the same vein as Tapies, Dubuffet and Afro, using a variety of rough materials into their painted surface such as earth, ash, cement and charred sacking. His example had a powerful effect on the direction of Sandra Blow's own work. She used his materials and began to distil her own form of reductive expressionism, preoccupied with space, matter and movement. American art was also important, and indeed, along with artists as diverse as Alan Davie, Peter Lanyon and William Gear, Blow was to have solo shows in New York in 1956-57.
After moving to St. Ives in 1957, Patrick Heron offered Blow accommodation at his home, Eagles Nest, from where she found herself a cottage to rent at nearby Tregerthen. Originally used by D.H. Lawrence in 1916, this cottage had a long association with the arts and was adjacent to the cottage where Trevor Bell and Karl Wescke lived. Blow did not stay long in Cornwall returning to London to teach at the Royal College of Art in 1960 where she was a tutor for 14 years. She won 2nd prize in the John Moores exhibition in Liverpool. She later returned to St Ives in 1994 relocating her studio to live there permanently until her death.
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