Sandra Blow

Blow was in her time a pioneering British abstract painter of the 1950s. Her work expressed a deliberate informality. Her first sale was to Sir Roland Penrose. In 1960 she had won the first Guggenheim Award. Before this, she enjoyed one of the first retrospectives at Tate St Ives, airing there paintings worked on in Cornwall where she had lived, works like 'Cornwall' (1950) and 'Space and Matter' (1955). In 1961 she was selected to exhibit at the Venice Biennale, She taught for 14 years at the Royal College of Art, becoming an honorary fellow there