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The painter, sculptor, and printmaker Peter Blake is fascinated by folk art, and his version of pop art is a distinctive fusion of traditional and avant-garde elements. In the late 1950s he began to produce collage paintings and constructions using postcards, photographs, book illustrations, toys, and other objects that reference popular culture and entertainment. In 1965 he embarked on a series of paintings of wrestlers, using images derived from newspaper photographs but constructing fictitious personae for his protagonists, such as “Doktor K. Tortur” and “Les Orchidées Noires.” “Babe Rainbow,” according to Blake, “is twenty-three years old and has broken her nose in the ring. She is the daughter of the notorious Doktor K. Tortur.” In 1968, Dodo Editions printed an edition of approximately ten thousand screen prints of Babe Rainbow on tin, and they were sold for £1 in trendy boutiques in London, satisfying Blake’s ambitions to create art that was widely accessible.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016