Description

"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.