Peter Blake

Peter Blake is a famous British artist who has worked in many media, including painting, drawing, watercolour, collage, sculpture, and printmaking. This updated edition of the most comprehensive illustrated survey of his life and work explores his creative output from the 1950s to the present, focusing on his working-class origins and his enthusiasm for popular culture. Blake's collage paintings of 1959–62 were particularly influential within British Pop, combining existing imagery with bold and bright colours. The book celebrates Blake's life and humanity, showcasing the sheer scale of his production and the variety of subject matter, form, and medium in his work.

Format: Hardback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 16 June 2022
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Ltd

Since his emergence in the early 1960s as a key member of the Pop Art movement, Peter Blake has become one of the best-known and most popular artists of his generation. Though primarily a painter, he has worked across many media, from drawings, watercolors, and collages to sculpture and printmaking, as well as commercial art in the form of graphics and album covers – most notably his design for The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album in 1967.

Exploring his remarkable creative output from the 1950s to the present, Peter Blake is the most comprehensive illustrated survey available of the life and work of the artist. Marco Livingstone grounds Blake's art firmly in his working-class origins, identifying a yearning for the innocence of childhood in his bittersweet paintings of the early to mid-1950s that depict children reading comics or going to the Saturday matinee at the cinema. From that moment, while studying at the Royal College of Art in London, Blake concerned himself with popular entertainments as subject matter and as the source of formal solutions for his paintings. The directness with which Blake gave expression to his enthusiasms for mass culture during the 1950s brought him to the forefront of the Pop Art movement before it had even been named, and independently of the investigations into similar areas by other British, American, and European artists. The radical nature of his collage paintings of 1959–62, in particular, in which he combined existing imagery from popular culture with unapologetically bold and bright colors, made him a singularly influential figure within British Pop.

This fully updated edition includes:
• A new introduction by art historian and critic Jonathan Jones, providing fresh insights into Blake's life and work
• Over 300 color illustrations, many of which have never been published before, showcasing Blake's diverse range of styles and techniques
• A comprehensive chronology of Blake's life, from his early childhood in London to his rise to fame in the 1960s and beyond
• An analysis of Blake's influences, from the British Pop Art movement to the traditions of British art and popular culture
• A discussion of Blake's most famous works, including "The Beatles Sgt. Pepper Album Cover," "The Self-Portrait with Two Circles," and "The Great Red Dragon Over London"
• A bibliography of Blake's published works, including books, exhibition catalogs, and articles
• An appendix, providing further information and resources for those interested in learning more about the artist

Whether you are an art lover, a student of art history, or simply someone curious about the life and work of one of Britain's most iconic artists, Peter Blake is the most comprehensive illustrated survey available of the life and work of the artist. This fully updated edition is a must-have for anyone interested in the world of contemporary art.

Weight: 1980g
Dimension: 256 x 298 x 32 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780500025314