SANDRA BLOW

Sandra Blow Biography

Sandra Blow (1921-2006)

Sandra Blow was born in London in 1921, daughter of a fruit wholesaler. Her natural flare for painting was nurtured on visits to her grandparents' orchards in Kent. Blow's parents were very supportive of her artistic endeavours as she later said: 'My father did not know anything about art but made sure I had a roof over my head and food so I was free to work.'

Between 1941 and 1946, Sandra Blow studied at St. Martin's School of Art as a figurative artist. She then attended the Royal Academy (1946-1947) where she trained as an abstract painter, before enrolling at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (1947-1948). Here she met the artist Alberto Burri, who became her lover and strongly influenced her development. Burri introduced her to working with coarse materials such as sackcloth, wood and tar, which Blow transmuted into her own strong and spacious pieces such as the work Space and Matter (1959).

In the late 1940s Blow also travelled in Spain and France. In 1951 Blow had her first solo show at Gimpel Fils, where she continued to exhibit regularly until the mid-sixties. The gallery also organised her first solo show in New York.

Between 1957 and 1958 Blow worked in Cornwall. She rented a cottage in Tregethen, a small hamlet near St. Ives, where D.H. Lawrence and Frieda had lived during the First World War. From 1959 Blow moved to London and in 1960 began teaching at the Royal College of Art, where she remained as a tutor for sixteen years and was eventually awarded an honorary fellowship. She continued to make regular trips to Cornwall and was consequently included in the Tate Exhibition 'St Ives, 1939-1964', where she showed work alongside artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon and Terry Frost.

Blow also exhibited at the annual Royal Academy show, the Venice Biennale and, in 1961, won second prize at the John Moores Exhibition in Liverpool. During the 1970s, Blow collaborated with the Architect Eric Defty on a series of paintings which aided her understanding and use of geometric shapes. After this, she began to use square canvases more often to enhance the architectural quality of her work. During the 1990s Blow also worked with the poet Alaric Sumner on the series entitled Waves on Porthmeor Beach.

Blow is celebrated not only for her tremendous skill as a colourist but for her craftsmanship evident in her collages, and her talent as a composer of painting and collage alike.



Recent Solo Exhibitions

2001 - Tate St Ives
1997 - New Millennium Gallery, St Ives
1994 - Retrospective, Royal Academy of Arts, London