ArtFair

Peter Blake

Sir Peter Thomas Blake, CBE, RDI, RA was born 25 June 1932. He is an English pop artist, best known for co-creating the sleeve design for the Beatles' studio album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

He was born in Dartford, Kent and educated at the Gravesend Technical College school of Art, and the Royal College of Art. During the late 1950s, Blake became one of the best known British pop artists. His paintings during this time included imagery from ads, music hall entertainment, and wrestlers, often including collaged elements. Blake was included in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and had his first solo exhibition in 1960. He was first identified with the emerging British Pop Art movement when he exhibited alongside David Hockney and R.B. Kitaj in the 'Young Contemporaries' exhibition of 1961.

Blake won the John Moores junior award for Self Portrait with Badges in 1961. He came to wider public attention when, along with Pauline Boty, Peter Phillips and Derek Boshier, he featured in Pop Goes the Easel, Ken Russell's Monitor film on pop art which was broadcast on BBC TV in 1962. From 1963 Blake was represented by Robert Fraser placing him at the centre of swinging London and brought him into contact with many leading figures of popular culture.

Over the years, Blake has painted several album sleeves including the Band Aid single, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (1984), Paul Weller's Stanley Road (1995), Oasis greatest hits album Stop the Clocks (2006) and the Ian Dury tribute album Brand New Boots and Panties (2001; Blake was Dury's tutor at the Royal College of Art in the mid-60s). He designed the sleeves for Pentangle's Sweet Child and The Who's Face Dances (1981), which features portraits of the band by a number of artists.

In 1969, Blake left London to live near Bath. His work changed direction to feature scenes based on English Folklore and characters from Shakespeare. In the early 1970s, he made a set of watercolour paintings to illustrate Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass using a young artist, Celia Wanless, as the model for Alice and in 1975 he was a founder of the Brotherhood of Ruralists. Blake moved back to London in 1979 and his work returned to earlier popular culture references.

In January 1992, Blake appeared on BBC2's acclaimed "Arena" Masters of the Canvas documentary and painted the portrait of the wrestler Kendo Nagasaki.

In June 2006, as The Who returned to play Leeds University 36 years after recording their seminal Live at Leeds album in 1970, Blake unveiled a Live at Leeds 2 artwork to commemorate the event. The artist and The Who's Pete Townshend signed an edition which will join the gallery's collection.

A fan of Chelsea Football Club, Blake designed a collage to promote the team's home kit in 2010. He also designed a shopping bag for the Lucky Brand Jeans company for the holiday season. As part of 'The Big Egg Hunt' February 2012 Sir Peter Blake designed an egg on behalf of Dorchester Collection. Blake created the carpet which runs through the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom's Middlesex Guildhall building.

As he approached his 80th birthday, he undertook a project to recreate the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover with images of friends and "great people" this time using desktop editing software rather than plywood cut-out images as used in the set created for the original album cover.

Blake now lives in Chiswick, London.