F is for Football

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, 100 Parliament Street

"F is for Football" comes from a series of twenty-six prints by Peter Blake, one for each letter of the alphabet. Other titles in this eclectic series include "E is for Everly Brothers" and "P is for Pachyderm", with its collage-like display of elephants. The old football cigarette cards which make up "F is for Football" are perhaps unexpected elements from an artist most commonly associated with the bright, brash images of the 1960s and '70s. Yet they were the "pop" images of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and are very much within the world of popular ephemera which characterises Blake's work.

Blake studied at the Royal College of Art in London during the mid 1950s and became one of the first British artists to produce works inspired by popular culture and folk art, later to be known as "Pop Art". Among his most famous works are his cover designs for the Band Aid single of 1984 and The Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" of 1967. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1981 and awarded a CBE in 1983.

Peter Blake is one of the leading British artists of the twentieth century. He was born in 1932 in Dartford and studied at Gravesend Technical College and School of Art from 1946 to 1951. He continued his studies at the Royal College of Art from 1953 to 1956, where he was one of the first British artists to produce works inspired by popular culture and folk art, later to be labelled ‘Pop art’. The incorporation of elements of popular cultural ephemera into his art is characteristic of his works from the mid 1950s onwards. Blake moved to the West Country with his wife in 1969 and co-founded the Brotherhood of Ruralists in 1975. His work of this period is characterised by an interest in themes of the Victorian period, such as fairy paintings, and in 1970 he produced illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-glass. Blake has also designed covers for a number of albums and singles, including Paul Weller’s Stanley Road of 1995, the Band Aid single of 1984 and, most famously, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of 1967. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1981 and awarded a CBE in 1983. He lives and works in London.

Places

Subjects

cigarette card, football, male portrait, clover, rose, coat of arms

Materials & Techniques

screenprint

Artist

Peter Blake (1932 - )

Title

F is for Football

Portfolio Title

The Alphabet Set

Edition

29/95

Date

1991

Medium

Screenprint

Dimensions

width: 77.00 cm, height: 103.00 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from JHW Fine Art, March 2005

Inscription

below image: 29/95 / 'F is for Football' / Peter Blake

Provenance

JHW Fine Art, London

GAC number

18002