Background

Pasmore was born in Chelsham, Surrey, United Kingdom, on December 3, 1908. He was the son of Dr. Edwin S. Pasmore, a physician and mental specialist, and Gertrude Pasmore, an amateur painter.

Education

Victor Pasmore studied at Summer Fields School in Oxford and Harrow School in west London, where he first became seriously interested in painting. He attended evening classes at the Central School of Art and Crafts, studying under the guidance of under A.S. Hartrick who had worked in France and knew Van Gogh. After experimenting with abstraction, Pasmore worked for a time in a lyrical figurative style, painting views of the River Thames from Hammersmith much in the style of Turner and Whistler. Pasmore intended to go to Oxford and then to the Slade School of Art, but the sudden death of his father made him move to London.

Career

After 1930 Pasmore began to take part in exhibitions with the London Group. London Artists' Association organized Pasmore's first one-man exhibition in 1933. The following year the painter presented his pictures with the Objective Abstractions group at the Zwemmer Gallery. He served as a clerk in the Public Health Department of the London County Council until 1937.

Victor Pasmore set up his own teaching studio in 1937 with Claude Rogers on Fitzroy Street. Following the example of the Impressionists, in the late 1930s, the school contributed towards a revival of naturalistic interest. Victor Pasmore continued to paint and discovered the revolutionary School of Paris. In 1940 a solo exhibition was held at the Wildenstein Gallery on Bond Street. In 1943 he was appointed director of Painting at Camberwell School of Art, London.

By 1947, Pasmore had turned away from representational painting to abstraction, and later, his constructions. Pasmore's abstract works pioneered the use of some new materials and they were sometimes on a large architectural scale. His artworks were influenced by Gauguin, Van Gogh, Rousseau, Modigliani, Matisse, and Picasso. During this time he also discovered oriental art and the Japanese Print. Victor Pasmore exhibited his first abstract paintings at the London Group and in a solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery.

Victor Pasmore left his post at the Camberwell School in 1949 for the London County Council Central School of Arts and Crafts. That year he also visited St Ives, Cornwall, in the summer where he met Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth. In the year 1950 he was commissioned to design an abstract mural for a bus depot in Kingston upon the Thames. The following year Victor Pasmore produced a mural to the Festival of Britain that promoted a number of the British Constructivists.

Between 1954 and 1961 he was the leader of the art course at Kings College, Durham. The artist was appointed consulting director of Architectural Design for Peterlee development corporation in 1955. His choices in this area proved quite controversial.

He represented Britain during the 1961 Venice Biennale, participated at the Documenta II 1959 in Kassel and also was a trustee of the Tate Gallery, donating a great number of artworks to its collection. He gave a lecture on J.M.W. Turner as 'first of the moderns' to the Turner Society. He was elected a vice president of the society in 1975.

Achievements

• 

  Victor Pasmore was a pioneer of the development of abstract art in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. On November 3, 2014, the Central Bank of Malta collaborated with the Victor Pasmore Foundation, inaugurated the Victor Pasmore Gallery in the Central Bank’s premises at the Polverista Gallery. The gallery has a permanent exhibition of works discovered in Pasmore’s home in Gudja, Malta and also in his residence in Blackheath, London.
  
  Today, Pasmore's works are in included in the collections of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Tate Gallery in London.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Square Motif, Blue and Gold: The Eclipse

  • The Wave

  • Blue Mandala

  • Lamplight

  • Nude

  • Relief Construction in White, Black and Maroon

  • Abstract in White, Black, Indian and Lilac

  • Untitled

  • Harmony of Opposites

  • Brown Symphony

  • A Tree Full of Birds 2

  • Abstract in White, Black and Ochre

  • Reclining Nude

  • The Green Earth

  • The Quiet River. The Thames at Chiswick

  • Sun and Sky

  • Grey Symphony

  • The Snowstorm

  • Appollo 1 Ascending Development

  • Square Motif Green & Lilac

  • The Studio of Ingres

  • The Wave

  • Abstract in White, Grey and Ochre

  • The Starry Night

  • Spiral Motif in White, Black and Indigo

  • Yellow Abstract

  • Square Motif in White and Indian Red

  • The Passion Flower

  • Hanging Gardens of Hammersmith No.2

  • Il Labirinto della Psiche

  • Composite Image: Orange and Pink

  • The Cloud

  • Spiral Development in Green Violet Blue & Gold

  • Synthetic Construction (White and Black)

  • The Park

Views

Quotations: "I felt the picture has to be an independent object in its own right, not a representation of another object."

Membership

In 1932 Pasmore became a member of the London Artists' Association, and in 1934 he became a full member London Group. In 1949 he joined the Penwyth Society.

• London Artists' Association , United Kingdom

  1932

• London Group , United Kingdom

  1934

• Penwyth Society , United Kingdom

  1949

Interests

• Artists

  J.M.W. Turner, Ben Nicholson, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee

Connections

In 1940 Victor Pasmore married the painter Wendy Blood, who was the subject of many of Pasmore's paintings. In 1941 their son, John Henry, and in 1943 daughter, Mary Ellen, were born.

Father:

Edwin S. Pasmore

Mother:

Gertrude Pasmore

Spouse:

Wendy Blood

Son:

John Henry Pasmore

Daughter:

Mary Ellen

References

• Victor Pasmore: Towards a New Reality
• Victor Pasmore: The Space Within
• Victor Pasmore: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Paintings, Constructions, and Graphics 1926-1979
• Constructed Abstract Art in England: A Neglected Avant-Garde (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art)