She was an inspiration in both her work and her life, any body who had the pleasure of meeting her would have been touched by her vivaciousness and style.

From 1941 Sandra studied at St Martins and the Royal Academy schools but it was in 1947 after moving to Italy that she started her painting career making her mark with strong tonal works using paint and collage. It was here where she met Alberto Burri.  But it was Blow’s time in Italy in the late 1940s, where she studied Renaissance art and architecture, that remained a vivid inspiration in her work. She talked of her time there as ‘pure paradise’ and she revelled in the colours and textures of this Mediterranean country. Whilst she was there she met Alberto Burri who introduced her to the potentials of collage and textures, from which she distilled her own form of reductive abstract expressionism, preoccupied with space, matter and movement. The Renaissance principles of geometry, light and scale also had a profound effect and Blow set about treating form with its own innate reality and rejection of subject matter in terms of representation.

When she returned to London in 1950 she joined the forefront of British Modern Abstract Art. Her successs followed quickly achieving internatioanl recognition.

Sandra spent 44 years in London devoting her working life to developing her abstract art. In the 1950’s Blow went to St Ives and met the painter Roger Hilton. From this point onwards friendships with other artists associated with St Ives developed. Hilton, who explored the abstract language of painting, simplifying his use of shape and colour to emphasise flatness and the object  quality of painting also had a profound effect on Blow’s work Blow was particularly interested in printmaking. She used the process as another medium within which to work out ideas and explore colour and shape – some of her results have a particular vibrancy, such as Chrome on Yellow


It was a time that she described as being 'wide open` her contemporaries were the likes of Bacon, Freud, Frost, Hilton + Pasmore also the jazzman and art critic George Melly.

In 1960 she won the Guggenheim International Award. In 1971 Sandra was elected into the Royal Academy and in 1983 received an Honorary Fellowship. Sandra moved to Cornwall in 1994 where she continued to work right up until her sudden death. CCA Galleries have had the great pleasure of working with Sandra for over seven years and in that time have published many stunning silkscreen prints with collaged elements and textures and glazes, her uncompromising approach pushed printmaking techniques to new boundaries with the introduction of Hessian, film and cloth. The prints have become almost sculptural. Last year in celebration of Sandra's 80th birthday CCA published a silkscreen entitled 'Rilievo' The collaged edition of 80 pieces is so delicately constructed that each one is presented Boxed.

COLLECTIONS INCLUDE:

Arts Council of Great Brition Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Contemporary Arts Society, London Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Leeds City Art Gallery Leicester Museum of Art Liverpool University. Museum Modern Art New York Nuffield Foundation Tate Gallery British Council Victoria and Albert Museum