A lot of [my] work is about collecting. In mean, the act of collecting is a conceptual art form.
– Peter Blake
Interdisciplinary artist Peter Blake (b. 1932) is recognised as one of the pioneers of British Pop Art. His diverse oeuvre includes a wide array of painting, sculpture, printmaking, photomontage, and collage, but is united by a distinctive reappropriation of popular cultural signifiers and imagery. He is also a prolific graphic artist and designer, having produced some of the most iconic album artworks of the twentieth century including those of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) (with his then-wife Jann Haworth) and the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (1984).
Born in Kent in 1932, Blake attended the Gravesend School of Art between 1949 and 1951. From 1951-53 he completed his National Service in the RAF before furthering his formal artistic training at the Royal College of Art. At the RCA between 1953 and 1956, Blake studied alongside other luminaries of British Modern and Contemporary art, including Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, and Richard Smith.
In 1961, Blake’s status as an artist at the vanguard of the London scene was cemented by his inclusion in that year’s Young Contemporaries show, which also featured works by David Hockney, RB Kitaj, Patrick Caulfield, and Allen Jones. The same year, he won the First Prize award in the junior section of the John Moores painting exhibition in Liverpool with his work Self Portrait with Badges (1961) (now in the Tate collection).
Following this early success, Blake has constantly innovated and diversified his practice alongside his painting, regularly producing transdisciplinary collage, assemblage, and sculptural works. He cites early American Pop Artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns as major influences on his approach.
In 1963, he had his first solo exhibition, at Portal Gallery in London, and henceforth became entrenched in the London art arena. Since then, he has regularly exhibited across the world – in both one-man and significant group shows highlighting his place as a forerunner of British Pop Art alongside artists like Richard Hamilton, Gerald Laing, and Pauline Boty.
In 1967, Blake and his then-wife Jann Haworth produced the album artwork for the seminal Beatles record Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The sleeve design is characteristic of Blake’s idiosyncratic artistic style and propelled his work to a practically unsurpassed level of recognisability.
In 1973-74, he had his first major institutional retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (touring to; the Kunstverein Hamburg, Hamburg; Gemeentemuseum, Arnhem; and Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels). This has been followed by consistent large-scale museum and gallery shows throughout his career up to the present day. These include at the Tate Gallery, London (now Tate Britain) (1983), The Holburne Museum, Bath (2011), Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2012), and twice at Tate Liverpool, Liverpool (2000 and 2007).