Pasmore, Victor

Pasmore, Victor (1908–1998). British painter and maker of constructions who is unusual in having achieved equal eminence as both a figurative and an abstract artist. He was born at Chelsham, Surrey, and from 1927 to 1937 worked as a clerk for the London County Council, while attending evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. From 1930 he exhibited with the London Group (he became a member in 1934) and in 1934 he exhibited with the Objective Abstractionists at the Zwemmer Gallery. His work at this time was still figurative, in a freely-handled, Fauve-influenced style, but the work of his fellow exhibitors at the Zwemmer Gallery led him to experiment with abstraction. He soon reverted to naturalistic painting, however, and in 1937 he combined with William Coldstream and Claude Rogers in founding the Euston Road School. Characteristic of his work at this time and in the early 1940s are some splendid female nudes and lyrically sensitive Thames-side landscapes that have been likened to those of Whistler (Chiswick Reach, NG, Ottawa, 1943). In 1948 he underwent a dramatic conversion to pure abstraction, and by the early 1950s he had developed a personal style of geometrical abstraction. As well as paintings, he made abstract reliefs, partly under the influence of Ben Nicholson and partly under that of Charles Biederman's book Art as the Evolution of Visual Knowledge, lent to him in 1951 by Ceri Richards. His earlier reliefs had a hand-made quality, but later—through the introduction of transparent perspex—he gave them the impersonal precision and finish of machine products (examples are in the Tate Gallery, London). Through work in this style he came to be regarded as one of the leaders of Constructivism in Britain. Later his paintings became less austere and more organic. He also made prints in various techniques.

Pasmore was an influential teacher and was much concerned with bringing abstract art to the general public. He taught at Camberwell School of Art, 1943–9, the Central School of Art and Design, 1949–53, and King's College, Newcastle upon Tyne (now Newcastle University), as head of the painting department, 1954–61. The ‘basic design’ course that he taught at Newcastle (based on Bauhaus ideas) spread to many British art schools. From 1955 to 1977 he was consulting director of urban design for the south-west area of Peterlee New Town, County Durham, where he attempted to ‘achieve the sort of synthesis between architecture and painting envisaged by Le Corbusier and van Doesburg. The result has echoes of De Stijl’ (Buildings of England). In 1966 Pasmore bought a house on Malta and subsequently divided his time mainly between there and London. He won many honours, and Kenneth Clark described him as ‘one of the two or three most talented English painters of this century'.