... by two years of National Service. This meant that on arrival at the Royal College of Art in 1953, Blake and many of his contemporaries were 21, three years older and more experienced than undergraduates usually would be, and carrying with them childhood memories of war, and experience of the military. Much of the energy and optimism that permeated the creative industries in the 1950s, from furniture design to tableware, Fine Art to Architecture, seems to have come from a sort of collective will, imagining the past into history and concentrating on building a brighter future.
Pop Art sprang almost wholesale from this foment of bright ideals and social change, with Peter Blake as a leading protagonist. Sir Peter Blake Original work embodies this energy.
Blake Limited Edition Prints, such as ‘Girly Door’, ‘Aquarium’ or ‘Empire State’, as available to buy today, reflect the artist’s Pop Art sensibilities, returning repeatedly to themes of found images, collage, the mundane ephemera of existence, industrial branding and logos, the continuing cross-fertilization of ideas between Music and the visual arts, and copious art historical referencing. Sir Peter Blake Limited Edition Prints visit some or all of these considerations and present them in beautiful bright hopeful colours for us to hang on our walls. There is a blankness to much of the work – a flat pretty surface that disguises but doesn’t hide the truth beneath.