Blow travelled across Europe in 1947, settling for a year in Italy where she enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti. She studied at St Martin’s School of Art where she graduated in 1946. Exploring tensions between marks and materials, Blow’s canvases are typically bold in nature, appearing impulsive and daring, and illustrative of her desire to preserve the element of surprise.īlow was born in London, in 1925. Presenting an amalgamation of geometric shapes, bold colours and organic materials, her large scale canvases prod the boundary between painting and sculpture. Using materials such as cement and grit, Blow’s paintings are collage-like in their combination of painted and constructed elements. Travelling across Europe in 1947, Blow discovered new and radical ideas about the nature of pictorial space.
Sandra Blow RA pioneered British abstraction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries through her ongoing investigations of scale, colour and composition, and use of diverse materials.
