Swimmer , 1987, acrylic on canvas, 274.4x365.8 cm. From the press release: By the 1950s Sandra Blow was one of the pioneering abstract painters who introduced a new expressive informality to British art. Later, in response to the optimistic climate of the late 1960s, her palette lightened, and, for most of the rest of her career, easily manipulated collage materials such as torn paper or brightly coloured canvas cut-outs featured in her often large-scale pictures. The Matisse-inspired decorative manner of her middle and late periods was a seamless collaboration between the constructed and the freely painted. The exhibition at The Exchange will feature at least nine of her large-scale works from the latter 1980s onwards. These paintings are extraordinarily ambitious in scale, even in comparison to works by her contemporaries such as Roger Hilton and Terry Frost, and reflect a confident mastery of the materials she used. Many of the works combine painti...