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Lot Essay
In 1950, Blow arrived back in London where, for the next 44 years, she was to be primarily based. After studying at the Academia di Belle Arte in Rome, her travels in Italy with the painter Alberto Burri and summers spent in Spain and France, where she had encountered Graham Sutherland, she 'spoke of the slow bringing-together in her work around 1950 of aesthetic principles with the formless imperatives of emotion and experience' to create her first abstract works (see M. Bird, Sandra Blow, Aldershot, 2005, p. 45).
Roland Penrose bought the first abstract work that she offered for sale, and introduced her work to the mixed exhibitions at the newly formed Institute of Contemporary Arts. Blow's career was launched with these early 1950s paintings, such as the present work. Michael Bird comments that, 'Within a few years of her first sale to Penrose, her work was being exhibited throughout Europe, in New York in 1957 and at the Venice Biennale in 1958. She appeared in mixed shows of British avant-garde, if not exclusively abstract, artists alongside Hilton, Heron, Lanyon, Armitage, Chadwick and others of the new generation. The 1950s were the decade when, as at no other time in Blow's career, the excitement of the work she was doing, the sense that this was part of a shared movement ... and the enjoyment of being young, well-known and in demand all coincided' (ibid p. 50).
Roland Penrose bought the first abstract work that she offered for sale, and introduced her work to the mixed exhibitions at the newly formed Institute of Contemporary Arts. Blow's career was launched with these early 1950s paintings, such as the present work. Michael Bird comments that, 'Within a few years of her first sale to Penrose, her work was being exhibited throughout Europe, in New York in 1957 and at the Venice Biennale in 1958. She appeared in mixed shows of British avant-garde, if not exclusively abstract, artists alongside Hilton, Heron, Lanyon, Armitage, Chadwick and others of the new generation. The 1950s were the decade when, as at no other time in Blow's career, the excitement of the work she was doing, the sense that this was part of a shared movement ... and the enjoyment of being young, well-known and in demand all coincided' (ibid p. 50).