Saturday 14 November 2026
The National Portrait Gallery will launch its 2027 exhibition programme with Peter Blake: Pop Art Life, the first ever major institutional exhibition dedicated to the portraiture of Sir Peter Blake. Curated by Tanya Bentley in close collaboration with the artist himself, it brings together portraits from his trailblazing eight-decade career, from Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe to Eric Clapton and The Beatles. The show runs from 11 February to 23 May 2027 in the gallery’s 2nd Floor Gallery. Here are five things to know.
1. A first for Blake’s portraits
Although Blake is one of Britain’s best-loved artists and a pioneer of Pop Art in the UK, this is the first major exhibition to focus on his portraits. It will also be the first show dedicated to the artist in a London national museum in nearly 30 years. Curator Tanya Bentley, Contemporary Curator at the National Portrait Gallery, said: “Although Blake has rarely before been described as a portrait artist, this exhibition reveals how central people have always been to his practice from his cultural heroes and invented wrestlers to his friends and creative collaborators.” The exhibition also celebrates Blake in his 95th year.
2. Around 70 works across eight decades
Featuring around 70 works, the exhibition charts how Blake developed his singular and instantly recognisable aesthetic. It begins with portraits made as a student in the 1950s, such as Children Reading Comics (1954), and journeys through a career spent drawing inspiration from popular culture, from the comics and film clubs of his childhood to his blues, rock ‘n’ roll and pop heroes. Works illustrated in the announcement include Self-Portrait with Badges (1961), The Beatles (1963-8), Bo Diddley (1963) and Babe Rainbow (1967), alongside later pieces such as Eric Clapton (2015) and Marcel Duchamp’s World Tour: The Artist’s Fancy Dress Ball (2004).
3. Portraits on lockers, doors and album covers
True to Blake’s Pop art origins, the exhibition will include portraits completed on found objects such as a military locker, a door and an album cover. These sit alongside more conventional, realist portraits on canvas of close friends from the worlds of music, fashion and art. Though Blake is best known for his Pop art-era works, figurative realism remains at the core of his practice, and these intimate portraits showcase his meticulous painterliness and commitment to capturing a very realistic likeness of his sitters. It promises a fresh view of an artist many visitors may think they already know well.
4. Shrines, wrestlers and tattooed figures
Blake’s portraits are not simply about capturing an individual; they also celebrate national and cultural stories. His shrines to icons such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, including Elvis Shrine: Portraits, Landscapes or Still Lifes? (1994-2015), reveal his interest in fandom and celebrity, becoming a form of collective portraiture in which fans and their lived experiences are reflected. His fictitious portraits of tattooed figures and wrestlers show his masterful capacity for storytelling and worldbuilding, as well as his deep interest in how people construct identity through the objects and imagery they surround themselves with.
5. Curated with the artist himself
The show has been shaped in close collaboration with Sir Peter Blake, and Tanya Bentley said it had been “an enormous privilege to work with Peter and his wife, Chrissy, to bring this exhibition to life.” Blake himself said: “I hope visitors feel as if this is a voyage of discovery, that they will be surprised to see pictures they haven’t seen before or look at my work from a different perspective. It’s not about me being a portrait painter, it’s about painting people.” Victoria Siddall, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, said the exhibition “brings together iconic works alongside little-known portraits”. An accompanying hardback book is available for pre-order at £35.
Visit
Peter Blake: Pop Art Life
11 February – 23 May 2027
2nd Floor Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE
Members go free
Exhibition book: Peter Blake: Pop Art Life (hardback, £35), available for pre-order