PETER BLAKE.BERLIN

The Berlin exhibition premiere with print works of Peter Blake is long overdue, given that Sir Peter (* 1932 in Kent, UK) rightfully takes credit for spurring the advent and shaping the further development of the international  Pop Art movement, especially in Great Britain.

Along with David Hockney and Richard Hamilton he is considered as a protagonist -  the godfather - of British Pop Art. As such he has influenced and impressed several generations of artists in the UK, right up to the present, including  famed contemporary arts' stars like Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, an admired colleague and friend of Blake.

Even if Peter Blake has always been a painter as well, he is mostly known through his unique Pop Art collages.
In his collages he combines black and white or colored cut outs of photographs with brand icons, text fragments and figures from  cartoons or scenes from old postcards. Often the image compositions feature additional elements of bold forms or letters in radiant primal colours.  Visual puns and artistic quots hinting to fellow artists from Marcel Duchamp to Jasper Jones as well as images of numerous friends and persons of public interest - of current affairs or historic popular culture icons like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe und Elvis Presley populate his enormously detailed and colourful group pictures.

Even if Blake may be tired of hearing it, the most famous of these is probably the cover of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Blake designed the icon album cover together with his then wife and artist Janna Haworth. The album became a milestone in music history and influenced later legendary record cover designers like Hipgnosis.

It was the democratic aspect of pop music which motivated Peter Blake at the outset of his career as an artist to create a form of art analogue to pop music, a kind of art which would appeal not only to higher echelons of the society but to the wider population and their day-to-day-experiences.

The exhibition shows a broad thematic spectrum of Blake's works from more than 5 decades which display his mastery and passion of silk screen printing techniques which allow him to make his works accessible and affordable for a broad audience. “This is what Pop Art was supposed to be all about.” (Peter Blake).

Opening: 02.02.2019, 7 pm, please register here.

Browse Gallery, Bergmannstr. 5, 10961 Berlin (courtyard right)