Often referred to as the Godfather of British Pop Art, Sir Peter Blake is an English artist whose work is inspired by his love affair with icons and the ephemera of popular culture. Born in Dartford, Kent, he studied at Gravesend Technical College before attending the Royal College of Art, and upon graduating in 1956 won the Leverhulme Research Award to study popular art, travelling through Belgium, France, Italy and Spain.
It was around the period of his return to the UK that his style evolved from classical naturalistic oil paintings to collages containing images of movie stars, musicians and pin-up girls that we most readily associate him with. In 1961 he was featured in the Young Contemporaries exhibition alongside David Hockney and R. B. Kitaj, becoming firmly identified with the emerging British Pop Art movement.
He is perhaps best known for co-creating the sleeve design for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, as well as the cover of the Band Aid single Do They Know It's Christmas? and the Live Aid concert poster. He became a Royal Academician in 1981, a CBE in 1983, and in 2002 received a knighthood for his services to art.
Photograph by The Academy on Vimeo via Wikimedia Commons
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