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Born: 14 September 1925, London, UK
Died: 22 August 2006
Elected ARA: 14 October 1971
Elected RA: 11 May 1979
Category of Membership: Painter
Sandra Blow RA, Blue and White Collage
Sandra Blow studied at St Martin’s School of Art from 1941 to 1946, at the Royal Academy Schools from 1946 to 1947, and subsequently at the Academy of Fine Arts, Rome from 1947 to 1948. She travelled to Spain and France in the late 1940s, worked in Cornwall for a year from 1957 to 1958 and went on to teach at the Royal College of Art from 1960.
Blow’s first solo exhibition was at Gimpel Fils in 1951, where she continued to exhibit regularly until the mid-sixties. Further solo shows were held at the New Art Centre, London (1966, 1968, 1971, 1973), at Clare College, Cambridge (1968) and at the Royal Academy of Arts, London (Diploma Gallery) in 1979. More recently, a retrospective of her work was held in the Sackler Galleries at the Royal Academy (1994). Blow also participated in many international group exhibitions from an early stage in her career. These included 'Young British Painters', at The Art Club, Chicago (1957), which subsequently toured the USA for two years, the Venice Biennale Young Artists Section (1958), 'Aspects of New British Art', British Council touring exhibition of Australia and New Zealand (1967), and 'St Ives' held at the Tate Gallery, London (1985). More recently her work has been regularly included in group exhibitions at the Tate Gallery, St Ives, and in other shows throughout the UK.
Blow’s awards include joint-winner of the International Guggenheim Award (The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1960), Second Prize Winner in the John Moores Liverpool Exhibition (1961) and the Korn Ferry Picture of the Year Award, Royal Academy (1998). In 1994 her work 'Green and White' was purchased under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest for the Nation. Among her recent commissions are a glass screen for Heathrow Airport (commissioned by the BAA in 1995), and illustrations for 'Waves on Porthmeor Beach', by Alaric Sumner (Wordsworth Books, 1995).
Sandra Blow was appointed Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1973 and Honorary Fellow of the London Institute in 2003.
Recent solo exhibitions
2006 Lemon Street Gallery, Truro
2004 Caroline Wiseman, London
2001 Tate St Ives
1997 New Millennium Gallery, St Ives
1994 Retrospective, Royal Academy of Arts, London
1991 Francis Graham-Dixon Gallery, London
Public collections
Tate Britain
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Arts Council of Great Britain
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Contemporary Arts Society, London
The British Council
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Arts Council of Northern Ireland
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
Felton Bequest, Melbourne, Australia
Nuffield Foundation
Nuffield Pictures for Hospitals for Children
Peter Stuyvesant Collection
Department of the Environment
Department of Education and Science
County Borough of Dudley
Carlisle Public Museums and Art Gallery
Newnham College, Cambridge
Leeds City Art Gallery
Leicester Museum and Art Gallery
Leicestershire Education Authority
Liverpool University
Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London
Contact details for further information
Email membershipoffice@royalacademy.org.uk
