The composition is also the source for the title of Blake’s painting and is believed to be set during a Hollywood party symbolizing an artificial and glamorous lifestyle. The original image by Cooper shows the figure wearing tight shorts and sets a homoerotic overtone for the scene but with Blake’s incorporation of balloons, the mood has lightened. In 1961, Blake started working on wrestling series, which he achieved by first finding photographs of wrestlers in magazines to work from as a starting point. Blake is one of the leading figures of British pop art. After graduating from the RCA, he began to appropriate pop culture imagery, creating homages to figures such as Marilyn Monroe. His most famous works include the collage album cover for the Beatles’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which he created with his then wife Jann Haworth . Recalling his time studying at the Slade in the 1990s, Stuart Pearson Wright, who has paintings in the National Portrait Gallery, said they weren’t “really taught any drawing at all. I taught myself to draw”. Entering Blake’s studio for the first time is intensely evocative. Collage has always been central to his artworks, from Victoriana to Americana, and this is where he hoards his sources – fermenting folk memories into art.

This image is one of a series of paintings and screen-prints of wrestlers made by Blake over the course of his career. He began going to wrestling matches in his childhood, and was fascinated by the culture and atmosphere that sprung up around them. This painting is derived from a photograph of a real wrestler, an American who pretended to be a German when he was in the ring, to project a more frightening persona. Blake was interested in the performative, camp nature of wrestling matches and sought to depict this. Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly. Together with six other painters who had made similar transitions to the British countryside, Blake formed the “Brotherhood of Ruralists”—an artistic group whose stated aims were, as he wrote in 1978, “to paint about love, beauty, joy, sentiment, and magic.” Blake’s Pop art had never been as cynical as American artists like Warhol, but during this period he embraced a unabashedly joyous and idyllic worldview at odds with the then-current modes of artistic production. The typefaces used in Peter Blake: Collage are influenced by the life work of the artist. For example, the font used in an Elvis Christmas card “was included in an artwork Peter had assembled from his abundance of Elvis memorabilia,” explains David. In Targets and Flags, a section in the monograph, the typeface is inspired by Blake completing his National Service in the RAF as a teleprinter operator in the early 1950s. “We then conducted some research to see what typefaces were being used in the RAF at that time,” says David. “From this research, we found a typographic solution for Targets and Flags that ties directly into his own experiences, but is not referenced in any of Peter’s works.” The British painter and illustrator Peter Thomas Blake attended the Gravesend Technical College and School of Art from 1946-1951 and then moved to the Royal College of Art in London, where he left in 1956. His early work was dominated by two major themes: Fantastic scenes from the circus world and naturalistic paintings with autobiographical features. Typical is the reference to the popular imagery of event posters, which Blake combines with portraits. In addition to circus figures, the painter often depicts children who are shown reading comic books. Both types of pictures are pioneering for English Pop Art in terms of both style and content. A Leverhulme scholarship enabled Blake to travel to Europe from 1956 to 1957 and familiarize herself with current artistic trends. Around 1959, inspired by the reproductions of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, he began to paint collage-like images of pop musicians and film stars and to produce assemblages from used materials, postcards and others. In addition to collage, Blake also works with the creative medium of imitation, creating painted collages, imitation pin-up walls and spin doors, enlarged painted postcard motifs, and painterly adaptations of posters. He celebrated his greatest success with his cover design for the Beatles album 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' (1967). In 1975 Blake was one of the founding members of the Brotherhood of Ruralists. Under the influence of the artist community and the rural environment of his residence in Wellow am Avon, his visual language changed. The members hope for new artistic impulses and moral renewal from life in the countryside. Like the Pre-Raphaelites, they strive for an aesthetic penetration of all areas of life. Blake turned to themes from childhood, fairy tales and the world of the elves, which he depicted in a realistic manner using techniques of the old masters.a b c Davies, Caroline (5 October 2016). "New faces on Sgt Pepper album cover for artist Peter Blake's 80th birthday". The Guardian. Peter Blake continues to create art today. There have been major retrospectives of his work. One was held at the Tate, in London, in 1983. Another was held at Tate Liverpool, in 2008.

Peter Blake admired the work of American artist Jasper John’s “Target Paintings.” In The First Real Target (1961), Blake creates his own target, by using a real archery target. While Johns chose to paint his targets on canvas, with visual brushstrokes, Blake had fun in this British Pop art artwork, by first purchasing a real archery target. Other leading artists echoed Blake’s lament, including the sculptor Michael Sandle, a Royal Academician who studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1950s. He was “appalled” by the recent experience of a Slade student: “They told her ‘we’re not interested in your drawings.’” In 1961, Peter Blake took part in the Young Cotemporary’s Exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Gallery. Later that same year, the artist took part in a group art exhibition called Blake, Boty, Porter, Reeve at A.I.A Gallery, also in London. Peter Blake and Art on FilmThe publication of Peter Blake: Collage will coincide with the opening of a new solo survey exhibition at Waddington Custot in London, Peter Blake: Time Traveller, which includes a number of important museum loans. The Independent Group, a group of artists, architects, and art critics, formed with an art centric agenda, in London, England. Talks were lively and included discussions on where fine art and popular culture met. One of his most famous works is On the Balcony (1955-1957). What makes the work unique is that it looks like a collage, but on further inspection the viewer can see it was painted by hand. This is considered a major early work in the Pop art movement. On the Balcony. (1955–1957) Peter Blake. Tate Gallery, London. Video still of Sir Peter Blake taken in 2016; The Academy on Vimeo, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons The Pop art movement began in England, during the mid-twentieth century and provided a radical shift in how art had been viewed throughout art history. Blending fine art with popular culture, pop artists incorporated images from everyday life, including advertising, images from comic books, newspapers, television, film, and consumer goods. Peter Blake and Pop Art Style