Victor Pasmore CBE

Victor Pasmore CH CBE RA (1908–1998) was one of the most important figures in post-war British art. Beginning as a painter of quietly observed landscapes, interiors and figures, he underwent a radical transformation in the late 1940s and became a leading advocate of abstraction and Constructivism in Britain.

Born in Chelsham, Surrey, Pasmore studied part-time at the Central School of Arts and Crafts while working for the London County Council. During the 1930s he became associated with the London Group and developed a restrained figurative style influenced by Cézanne, Turner and the French tradition. In 1937, with William Coldstream and Claude Rogers, he founded the Euston Road School, which promoted close observation and an objective approach to everyday subjects.

Pasmore’s career changed dramatically after the Second World War. From around 1947 he abandoned representation and began to explore pure abstraction, influenced in part by Ben Nicholson, Piet Mondrian and Paul Klee. In 1948 The Redfern Gallery presented his first solo exhibition of abstract work, a turning point both in his own career and in the development of post-war British abstraction. Herbert Read described this change in Pasmore’s work as “the most revolutionary event in post-war British art”.

During the early 1950s Pasmore moved beyond painting into relief construction, collage and works incorporating wood, Perspex and other materials. His compositions became increasingly geometric and architectural, based on relationships of line, proportion, colour and space. He also exhibited alongside artists including Adrian Heath, Anthony Hill, Robert Adams, Kenneth Martin and Mary Martin, helping to establish a renewed Constructivist movement in Britain.

Teaching was central to Pasmore’s influence. He taught at Camberwell School of Art, the Central School of Arts and Crafts and later at King’s College, University of Durham, where his radical approach to art education helped reshape post-war teaching. In 1954 he was appointed Consulting Director of Urban Design for Peterlee New Town in County Durham, where his most ambitious architectural project was the Apollo Pavilion, integrating sculpture, architecture and landscape.

Pasmore represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1960 and at the São Paulo Biennial in 1965. Major retrospective exhibitions followed at Tate, and his work became increasingly international in scope. After settling in Malta in the 1960s, his art gradually became freer and more lyrical, moving away from the strict geometry of his earlier constructions towards flowing forms, organic shapes and richer colour.

The Redfern Gallery played an important role at the crucial moment when Pasmore abandoned figurative painting for abstraction. He exhibited regularly at Redfern during the 1940s and 1950s, and the gallery has continued to include his work in exhibitions of Modern British art, most recently in its Centenary Exhibition and Spring Exhibition in 2024.

Pasmore was appointed CBE in 1959, Companion of Honour in 1981 and elected a Royal Academician in 1983. His work is represented in major public collections including Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Yale Center for British Art and the Government Art Collection.