Victor Pasmore: The Final Decades

Victor Pasmore: The Final Decades

Victor Pasmore: The Final Decades

March 16 – May 6, 2023

Marlborough Gallery 545 West 25th Street

New York, NY 10001

+ 1 212 541 4900 marlboroughnewyork.com

Associated Galleries

Marlborough Fine Art London 6 Albemarle Street

London W1S 4BY + 44 (0) 20 7629 5161 marlboroughgallerylondon.com

Galería Marlborough Madrid

Orfila, 5 28010 Madrid, Spain

+34 91 319 1414 galeriamarlborough.com

Victor Pasmore with Grey Symphony, 1968 – 77

© Estate of Victor Pasmore. All rights reserved, DACS / ARS 2023

Photo: John Pasmore

Victor Pasmore: The Final Decades

Martin Gayford

In one of art history’s more unexpected encounters, Victor Pasmore once met Pablo Picasso at Victoria Station. The celebrated Spaniard was visiting Britain to take part in a World Peace Congress in Sheffield. Pasmore was delegated to greet him as he stepped off the boat train 'quite a small chap with a huge suitcase, bigger than himself’ and found the great artist’s personality quite different from what he had expected.

‘He did nothing but joke all the time, non-stop,’ Pasmore remembered. ‘When we were driving past the National History Museum in the taxi he asked, “What's that?,”’ Pasmore explained and Picasso responded, ‘Ha! La Musée de nature morte!’ [that is, in French, the museum of still life but also of dead nature]. ‘Picasso,’ Pasmore concluded, ‘Was 100% anarchist, out of Barcelona, whatever it was he had to be the opposite.’ In that respect, perhaps the two artists had something in common. Pasmore himself was a serial dissident, even from orthodoxies he himself had established.

Pasmore (1908-1998) had one of the most complicated, not to say convoluted, career trajectories in British art. If you plotted his stylistic progression on a diagram, you might end up with a long, meandering line. An itinerary, that is, rather like those depicted in paintings such as Linear Composition, 1962, which wander here and there, doubling back on themselves. Over a long lifetime he was an impressionist, post-impressionist, realist, abstract artist in the manner of Paul Klee, constructivist, and sculptor of three-dimensional reliefs and installations before settling into the signature manner of his final decades, the period during which the works in this exhibition were made. The question then arises: was there any consistency in the art he produced prolifically over seven decades?

Pasmore began on as a fairly conventional, representational painter he later described his early work as impressionist though fauvist would be a better label. In 1934 he took part in an exhibition entitled Objective Abstraction, held in 1934 at the Zwemmer Gallery in London. Some of the works by Rodrigo Moynihan and Geoffrey Tibble would almost qualify as Abstract Expressionist. Pasmore himself described these works as ‘Tachiste sort of stuff.’ Few of the artists involved stayed with this manner for long.

‘You can do about a dozen of those brush-stroke pictures, and that's about it. You wonder what's going to happen next. We came to the conclusion that there was no future in it, that it was far too subjective, totally subjective. So we needed something to get back to an objective standpoint.’

Pasmore and his friend William Coldstream found this in a manner that came to be known as Euston Road (the name derived from a private art academy off that street in London which the artists set up). The guiding principle of Euston Road, as propounded by Pasmore’s friends Coldstream and Claude Rogers, was carefully measuring the precise location of each element in a picture. It was an attempt to depict the world in a sober, dispassionate, unromantic manner: not how they felt about it, just what was definitely there.

Victor Pasmore in his studio, c. 1970s

Photo: John Pasmore

In the politicised context of the 1930s, this was a British version of socialist realism. Or it was for the others. Typically, Pasmore opted out of that on the grounds that he had to work for a living. ‘I was in an office, working full-time, so I had no time to monkey about with politics.’ He just wanted to devote the time he had to what he called ‘pure painting.’ And he succeeded. By the early 1940s, Kenneth Clark, Director of the National Gallery, London, was describing him as one of the finest painters in the country.

In a way, Pasmore’s Thames landscapes of the mid-40s, which made him famous, stuck to the Euston Road programme. Christopher Stevens has establishing that The Quiet River: The Thames at Chiswick (1943–4), one of Pasmore’s mid-career masterpieces, is so topographically accurate that its viewpoint on the riverbank is still easy to find. On the other hand, its spirit is not doggedly factual, but delicately, swooningly romantic.

Gillian Ayres, who was taught by Pasmore, Rogers, and Coldstream at Camberwell School during the late 40s, remembered him as ‘intelligent, and wayward.’ His friends ‘all saw him as a sort of genius, but he was up to things in the middle of them all, I wouldn't define him as Euston Road.’ Something strange began to occur in Pasmore’s work, the meticulously observed subject seemed to dematerialise. In The Gardens of Hammersmith No. 2, the riverside location is still just about visible, but the Thames itself has disappeared leaving just the contours of bare, wintery trees and rounded shrubs represented by swarms of dots. The marks in paintings of this period are analogous to those in works from decades later.

The softly fuzzy green mases which make up The Park (1947–8), for example, are strikingly similar to those to be seen in Wandering Journey (1985) or Green Development in Two Movements (1989).

The same sensibility is clearly at work, except that the earlier picture is a depiction of a real landscape and the others explicitly are not. How then did the latter works come about? Asked in 1995 how he began a picture, Pasmore gave a revealing answer:

‘I used to be a landscape painter, like the old masters. How I start now, I don't know really. Technically my current things are very quick to do. If you are painting the Battle of Waterloo it takes a long time to paint and draw. But especially when I use spray paint it is very rapid. So most of the time is spent in thinking about the thing.’

Intriguingly, he gave a similar answer to a questionnaire given to each of the participants in the Objective Abstraction exhibition of 1934. In response to the query, 'Have you a clear conception of the painting before you begin? Does it grow while working?,' he replied: 'I have only an uncertain idea before I begin. I proceed as the painting demands until I have realised it in as complete and satisfying a form as I can.'

To Pasmore his development had a certain inner consistency. ‘Even when I was sixteen and an Impressionist painter, what I liked about impressionism was that you were doing something with a brush,

independently, making brushstrokes. Even though I was painting in front of a landscape, making these brushstrokes, I was conscious that I was making a painting—an independent object. I've stuck to that throughout.’

This, indeed, was his starting point. His impulse to become an artist had come from family visits to the Tate Gallery. ‘My mother used to take us there, and I became fascinated not by the great romantic Turners, but by the late ones: the Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth and the Interior at Petworth. These pictures struck me. You only saw what they were when you looked at the title. Before that, you just saw the painting. That's what started me off.’

In a way, that was what he was always after in his own work. Pasmore remained the same intuitive, instinctive artist over sixty or seventy years. But the appearance of what he made changed radically: abstract in 1934, then figurative over a decade, then militantly abstract. Much of his work was geometric and constructivist in 50s and early 60s. Then he returned to painting, almost as abruptly as he had switched from romantic realism to abstraction fifteen years before. His long, final phase had begun.

But how describe the works from these later years? There is no handy label such as ‘Euston Road’ or ‘Constructivist’ (even though, as we’ve seen, these don’t quite fit). When I talked to Pasmore in 1995, he explained thought ‘abstract’ was ‘a very bad word’ to describe what he did. Then he added, I call it independent painting: that is, art that is independent like music.

Victor Pasmore, The Quiet River: The Thames at Chiswick, 1947–8 oil on canvas

The musical parallel was evidently in his mind when he gave titles to a number of later paintings such as Symphony in Maroon and Five Colours, Grey Symphony, Black Rhythm or Green Development in Two Movements. But Pasmore pointed out, these and other titles were added after the work was finished. Responding to the suggestion that a picture such as Untitled (1990) or The Milky Way (1987) might put viewers in mind of stars or interstellar space, his answer was firm.

‘If people want to think they look like stars, as far as I'm concerned that's OK. I don't mind what they think it looks like. But not for me, I've no interest in representing any outside, extraneous object.’

However, as the conversation developed, it turned out that his position was more subtle and complex. ‘Great art,’ he mused, ‘must include the mind, and the weakness of pure painting is that it has not got an extraneous idea in it.’ Such a picture would have what he called ‘an intrinsic idea in terms of line, form, tone or colour.’

If possible, he liked to meld an additional idea to the which, he explained often happened afterwards, ‘What I've done suggests the idea.’ But then he immediately went on to add that this was not always the case, ‘Admittedly, I might think of an idea first, and think of an abstract form that might suit it.’

It is not hard to detect the same sensibility in paintings by Pasmore from widely different eras. His landscape of the 1940s reveal a tendency to punctuate large, soft masses of colour with sharp linear mars. You see much the same in a picture from forty years later such as The River's Edge, 1988.

This is not to say, however, that he did not experience Damascene revelations which sent him off on a fresh path. As it happens, one of these was an encounter not with Picasso himself, but with his work. As he recalled in 1995:

‘There was an exhibition of Picasso at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1945, of what he'd done in Paris during the War, these absolutely outrageous pictures. I went to this exhibition, of course already knew about Picasso having imitated him before in '30s. But when I saw this again, I didn't like it. But what came to me absolutely clearly, like a flash, was that Picasso had torpedoed the entire Renaissance tradition, from Leonardo to Cézanne. It was out. I thought to myself, well what on earth am I going to do? I've got to start again.’

This was the root of his notorious shift into abstraction. But about a decade later Pasmore received another impulse from a most unlikely source. Late one evening in 1955, he got a telephone call around 11 pm. The voice on the phone announced, ‘My name's Williams, the general manager of the Peterlee New Town. Can I come and see you?’ I said, ‘What, next week?’ He said, ‘No I want to see you now.’ So Williams came round about midnight and explained the problem he had. The project at Peterlee had been planned by Berthold Lubetkin, the leading Modernist architect working in Britain, but after repeated clashes with the National Coal Board, Lubetkin had resigned,

leaving the project to the local architect, who was, as Pasmore put it, ‘building the same old stuff, a council housing estate.’

In the end, Pasmore was given an entire sector of the town to arrange, plotting the course of roads, designing the outer forms of buildings like Constructivist sculpture. Effectively, he was drawing curves over the site, while breaking up the regimented box-like forms of the buildings. ‘The advantage I had was that I'd been a landscape painter, so I knew about environment, walking through the countryside.’

In the end, he tired of this new career, announcing in 1964 that, ‘I'm prepared to accept that my own bent and training as not as a sculptor or architect. I'm returning to painting because I find I can go further with it.’ But his involvement with Peterlee had changed his feeling for space.

‘As a classical artist one works within a closed rectangle. From Leonardo right up to Cézanne and even Picasso it's in a closed space. But the new space is open, in cases I put forms right outside the rectangle. This has been a big step in my pure painting. The trouble with poor old Mondrian was that he couldn't get out of it. This is very important, for me. You are still painting in the rectangle, but you've got to be able to get out of it as well.’

That’s what he was doing in paintings such as Brown Development, 1968, The Paradox of Progress, 1984, and Green Development in Two Movements, 1989 and also in some of his large-scale murals. And in a wider sense, like many artists, Pasmore spent his life escaping from various boxes. He’d given up his constructivist reliefs and architectural work, he explained in 1988, because it was ‘too limiting.’ That’s why he returned to painting, ‘there you can be slightly ambiguous.’ In Pasmore’s view, one of the qualities that made Picasso such a good artist was his willingness to contradict himself.

‘I think he was a complete hotchpotch. Guernica is a great painting just because it's a synthesis of cubism and surrealism the two opposites. Picasso started off as a rationalist, a completely rational thing. Then Surrealism came along, the dream, and Picasso cottoned onto this. Guernica is a synthesis of the two.’

Similarly, his works may have been ‘independent’ not depictions of any ‘extraneous object,’ but that doesn’t mean that they had no subject. ‘Art,’ Pasmore insisted ‘must include the world of ideas as well as the world of sensations.’ He wanted them to harmonise with the yin and yang of existence.

‘Human life in its emotional terms, tragic and joyful. It's a double thing. I believe nature is an interaction of opposites. Great art is a symbol of life in both those terms.’

At their best, his late paintings achieve that aspiration. They seem like nature without being images of anything specific in nature. Perhaps that’s what he saw on those boyhood visits to see Turner at the Tate.

This spread: Sunny Blunts housing development in Peterlee designed by Victor Pasmore © Durham County Record Office

The Apollo Pavilion designed by Victor Pasmore © Durham County Record Office

Abstract In Black and Ochre, 1960 oil and collage on wood

541/8 × 60 in. / 137.5 × 152.5 cm

Abstract in Black, White and Umber, 1960

collage and photostat

503/8 × 983/8 in. / 128 × 249.9 cm

Linear Composition, 1962 – 65 pencil and gravure on board

611/8 × 611/8 in. / 155.5 × 155.5 cm

Brown Image (Ochre), 1964 oil on board

48 × 48 in. / 121.9 × 121.9 cm

Brown Development No. 3, 1964 oil and wood on plastic

611/8 × 611/8 in. / 155.3 × 155.3 cm

Symphony in Maroon and Five Colours, 1968 oil and gravure on board

48 × 48 in. / 121.9 × 121.9 cm

Grey Symphony, 1968 – 1977 oil on board

953/4 × 733/4 in. / 243.5 × 187.5

Black Rhythm, 1976 paint on panel 547/8 × 201/4

The Paradox of Progress, 1984 oil on canvas on board

341/4 × 144 in. / 87 × 366 cm

Wandering Journey, 1985 oil on canvas on board

491/4 × 971/2 in. / 125.1 × 247.7 cm

The Milky Way, 1987 paint on board

483/8 × 1443/8 in. / 123 × 367 cm

The River's Edge, 1988 paint and canvas mounted on board 48 × 953/8 in. / 122 × 242.5 cm

Green Development in Two Movements, 1989

oil and spray paint

711/4 × 48 in. / 181 × 122 cm

Untitled, 1990 paint on canvas and board

251/4 × 661/2 in. / 64.1 × 168.9 cm

Beauty and the Beast, 1992 – 95

oil and spray paint

265/8 × 291/2 in. / 67.7 × 75.2 cm

Untitled, 1993

oil, spray paint and pencil on board 48 × 491/2 in. / 122 × 126 cm

Now that you have Reached The Sky, 1993 oil and pencil on board 96 × 473/4 in. / 244 × 121.5 cm

Untitled, 1996 oil, spray paint, and pencil on board 48 × 48 in. / 122 × 122 cm

Works in the Exhibition

[1] Abstract In Black and Ochre, 1960 oil and collage on wood

541/8 × 60 in. / 137.5 × 152.5 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

[2] Abstract in Black, White and Umber, 1960 collage and photostat

503/8 × 983/8 in. / 128 × 249.9 cm

Provenance: Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Line & Space (2020). Hastings Contemporary, London, United Kingdom, 29 April – 31 October 2020.

[3] Linear Composition, 1962 – 65 pencil and gravure on board

611/8 × 611/8 in. / 155.5 × 155.5 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Literature: Bowness, Alan, and Luigi Lambertini. Victor Pasmore, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926 – 1979. London: Thames and Hudson. 1980. Catalogue no. 363.

[4] Brown Image (Ochre), 1964 oil on board

48 × 48 in. / 121.9 × 121.9 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Retrospective Exhibition

1925 – 65 (1965). Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 14 May – 27 June 1965.

Literature: Bowness, Alan, and Luigi Lambertini. Victor Pasmore, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926 – 1979. London: Thames and Hudson. 1980. Catalogue no. 337.

[5] Brown Development No. 3, 1964 oil and wood on plastic

611/8 × 611/8 in. / 155.3 × 155.3 cm

Provenance: Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Retrospective Exhibition 1925 – 65 (1965). Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 14 May – 27 June 1965.

Literature: Reid, Norman, and Ronald Allen. Victor Pasmore: Retrospective Exhibition. London: Tate Gallery, 1965.

Bowness, Alan, and Luigi Lambertini. Victor Pasmore, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings,

Constructions and Graphics 1926 – 1979. London: Thames and Hudson. 1980. Catalogue no. 338.

[6] Blue Development, 1965 oil on board

611/8 × 611/8 in. / 155.3 × 155.3 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Retrospective Exhibition

1925 – 65 (1965). Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 14 May – 27 June 1965.

Literature: Bowness, Alan, and Luigi Lambertini. Victor Pasmore, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926 – 1979. London: Thames and Hudson. 1980. Catalogue no. 363 (reproduced in black and white).

[7] Brown Development, 1968 oil on board

363/4 × 37 in. / 93.5 × 94 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: The Space Within: New Paintings

Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, December 1968 – January 1969.

Literature: Bowness, Alan, and Luigi Lambertini. Victor Pasmore, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926 – 1979. London: Thames and Hudson. 1980. Catalogue no. 402.

[8] Symphony in Maroon and Five Colours, 1968 oil and gravure on board 48 × 48 in. / 121.9 × 121.9 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: The Space Within: New Paintings

Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, December 1968 – January 1969.

Literature: Bowness, Alan, and Luigi Lambertini. Victor Pasmore, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926 – 1979. London: Thames and Hudson. 1980. Catalogue no. 400.

[9] Grey Symphony, 1968 – 1977 oil on board

953/4 × 733/4 in. / 243.5 × 187.5 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: The Space Within: New Paintings

Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, December 1968 – January 1969. (first state)

British Art (1970). National Gallery, Washington, 1970. (first state)

Literature: Bowness, Alan, and Luigi Lambertini. Victor Pasmore, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926 – 1979. London: Thames and Hudson. 1980. Catalogue no. 652 (illustrated in color p. 161).

[10] Black Rhythm, 1976 paint on panel

547/8 × 201/4 in. / 139.5 × 51.5 cm

Exhibited: The Image Within: Recent Works 1974 – 77 (1977). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, September – October 1977, Marlborough Galerie AG, Zurich, October –December 1977.

Literature: Bowness, Alan, and Luigi Lambertini. Victor Pasmore, Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926 – 1979. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980. Catalogue. no. 656.

[11] The Paradox of Progress, 1984 oil on canvas on board

341/4 × 144 in. / 87 × 366 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Literature: Lynton, Norbert. Victor Pasmore, Paintings and Graphics, 1980 – 92. London: Lund Humphries, 1992. Catalogue no. 31 (illustrated in color, plate 35).

[12] Wandering Journey, 1985 oil on canvas on board

491/4 × 971/2 in. / 125.1 × 247.7 cm

Provenance: The Estate of The Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore (1986). Marlborough

Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 14 February –14 March 1986.

Retrospective Exhibition (1988 – 89). Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, United States, 16 November 1988 – 8 January 1989; traveled to Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., United States, 4 February – 2 April 1989.

Victor Pasmore, 1908 – 1998: Memorial Retrospective Exhibition (1999). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 9 June – 30 July 1999.

Victor Pasmore: Between Risk and Equilibrium (2017). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 20 June – 21 July 2017.

Literature: Lynton, Norbert. Victor Pasmore, Paintings and Graphics, 1980 – 92. London: Lund Humphries, 1992. Catalogue no. 50 (illustrated in color, plate 32).

[13] The Milky Way, 1987 paint on board

483/8 × 1443/8 in. / 123 × 367 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Between Risk and Equilibrium (2017). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 20 June – 21 July 2017.

Literature: Lynton, Norbert. Victor Pasmore, Paintings and Graphics, 1980 – 92. London: Lund Humphries, 1992. Catalogue no. 60 (illustrated in color, plate 41).

[14] The River's Edge, 1988 paint and canvas mounted on board 48 × 95 3/8 in. / 122 × 242.5 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Between Risk and Equilibrium (2017). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 20 June – 21 July 2017.

Literature: Lynton, Norbert. Victor Pasmore, Paintings and Graphics, 1980 – 92. London: Lund Humphries, 1992. Catalogue no. 74.

[15] Green Development in Two Movements, 1989 oil and spray paint

80 × 523/4 in. / 203.5 × 134 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Between Risk and Equilibrium (2017). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 20 June – 21 July 2017.

Literature: Lynton, Norbert. Victor Pasmore, Paintings and Graphics, 1980 – 92. London: Lund Humphries, 1992. Catalogue no. 78 (illustrated in color, plate 43).

[16] Untitled, 1990 paint on canvas and board

251/4 × 661/2 in. / 64.1 × 168.9 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: New Work (1992). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 18 September – 24 October 1992.

Literature: Lynton, Norbert. Victor Pasmore, Paintings and Graphics, 1980 – 92. London: Lund Humphries, 1992. Catalogue no. 74.

[17] Beauty and the Beast, 1992 – 95 oil and spray paint

265/8 × 291/2 in. / 67.7 × 75.2 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

[18] Untitled, 1993 oil, spray paint and pencil on board

48 × 491/2 in. / 122 × 126 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Centenary Exhibition (2008). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 2 – 26 April 2008.

[19] Now that you have Reached The Sky, 1993 oil and pencil on board

96 × 473/4 in. / 244 × 121.5 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Centenary Exhibition (2008). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 2 – 26 April 2008.

[20] Untitled, 1996 oil, spray paint, and pencil on board

675/8 × 677/8 in. / 172 × 172.5 cm

Provenance: The Estate of the Artist

Exhibited: Victor Pasmore: Centenary Exhibition (2008). Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom, 2 – 26 April 2008.

Brown Development No. 3, 1964 oil and wood on plastic 611/8 × 611/8 in. / 155.3 × 155.3 cm

Photo: Pierre Le Hors

Biography

1908 Born in Surrey, United Kingdom

1998 Died in Gudja, Malta

Education

1923 – 26 Studied at Harrow Art School, London, United Kingdom

1927 – 32

Studied at Central School of Arts and Design, London, United Kingdom

Solo Exhibitions

2023 Victor Pasmore, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

2022 Victor Pasmore: Prints, Marlborough Gallery, New York, New York

2021 Victor Pasmore: Line & Space, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

2020 Victor Pasmore: Line & Space, Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, United Kingdom

2019 Victor Pasmore: Space as Motif (Works from 1960 – 1970), Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

2017 Victor Pasmore: Between Risk and Equilibrium, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

2016

17

Victor Pasmore: Towards a New Reality, Djanogly Galley, Nottingham, United Kingdom; traveled to Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, United Kingdom

2015 Victor Pasmore in Three Dimensions, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

2011

12

Victor Pasmore: From Constructions to Spray Paint, New Art Centre, Roche Court, Salisbury, United Kingdom

2008 Victor Pasmore: Centenary Exhibition, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

2004 Victor Pasmore: Constructions, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

2001 Victor Pasmore: A Print Retrospective, 1951 – 1997, Marlborough Graphics, London, United Kingdom

1999 – 2000

Victor Pasmore: Changing the Process of Painting, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

1999 Victor Pasmore, 1908 – 1998: Memorial Retrospective Exhibition, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

1996 Visual Music: Victor Pasmore, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, United Kingdom

1995 Victor Pasmore New Work: Paintings, Etchings and Lithographs, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

1992 Victor Pasmore, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria

1990 – 91

Victor Pasmore: Nature into Art, Paintings and Constructions, 1940 – 1990, Center for International Arts, New York, New York; traveled to Serpentine Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1988 – 89

Retrospective Exhibition, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut; traveled to Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

1986 Victor Pasmore: Graphics Exhibition, Galleria 2RC, Rome, Italy

Victor Pasmore, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

1980 Victor Pasmore, Arts Council Retrospective Exhibition, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, United Kingdom; toured Great Britain

The Green Earth: New Paintings and Graphic Works, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

1977 The Image Within: Recent Works

1974 – 77, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

1974 Graphics Exhibition, Galleria 2RC, Rome, Italy

Victor Pasmore, Galerie Farber, Brussels, Belgium

1969 The Space Within: New Paintings

1968 – 69, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

1968 Paintings and Constructions 1960 – 1967, Graphics 1965 – 1967, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, United Kingdom; traveled to Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

1967 Solo Exhibition, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York, New York

Victor Pasmore, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

1966 Victor Pasmore, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

1965 Victor Pasmore: Retrospective Exhibition

1925-65, Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1964 Victor Pasmore, Galleria Lorenzelli, Milan, Italy

Victor Pasmore, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom

1962 Retrospective Exhibition, Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, Germany

1961 Victor Pasmore: Recent Paintings and Constructions, Marlborough New London Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1960 Solo Exhibition, Victor Pasmore, 1958-60, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Victor Pasmore: Paintings and Constructions, XXX Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy

1958 Basic Forms: New Paintings and Constructions, O’Hana Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1955 Retrospective Exhibition: Selected Works, 1926 – 54, Arts Council Gallery, Cambridge, United Kingdom

1954 Victor Pasmore, Paintings and Constructions, 1944 – 54, ICA Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1953 Victor Pasmore: Recent Work, Redfern Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1949 Victor Pasmore, Recent Paintings 1948 – 49, Redfern Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1948 Abstract and other Paintings by Victor Pasmore, Redfern Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1943 Solo Exhibition, Redfern Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1933 Solo Exhibition, Association's Cooling Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Selected Group Exhibitions

2022-23 Changing Times: A Century of Modern British Art, The Higgins Bedford, Bedford, United Kingdom

2022 Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945

1965, Barbican, London, United Kingdom

2021-22 Rhythm and Geometry: Constructivist Art in Britain Since 1951, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich, United Kingdom

2021 Hockney to Himid: 60 Years of British Printmaking, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, United Kingdom

2017 Two Decades: British Printmaking in the 1960s and 1970s, Marlborough Fine Art London, United Kingdom

2016 Abstract Paintings 1939 – 1989, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, United Kingdom

2013

14 Correspondences, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

2013 Basic Design, Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom; traveled to Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

2012 Concrete Parallels, Centro Brasileiro Britânico, São Paulo, Brazil

2011 Let Us Face the Future: British Art 1945 – 1968, The Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain

2008 Unpopular Culture, curated by Grayson Perry, De La Warr Pavillion, Bexhill, United Kingdom

2007 Towards a Rational Aesthetic: Constructive Art in Post-War Britain, Osbourne Samuel Gallery, London, United Kingdom

2006 Concrete Thoughts: Modern Architecture and Contemporary Art, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, United Kingdom

2003 Blast to Freeze: British Art in the Twentieth Century, Kunstmusuem, Wolfsburg, Germany

1985 St Ives 1939 – 64, Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1968 Relief/Construction/Relief, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois

1967 Recent British Painting, Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1965 The Artist and his Environment: Alan Davie, Merlyn Evans, Ivon Hitchens and Victor Pasmore, 8th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

1964 Documenta III, Kassel, Germany

Paintings and Sculpture of a Decade, 1954 – 64, Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1963 Victor Pasmore and William Scott, Kunsthalle, Berne, Switzerland

1961 Bewogen Beweging, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

1959 Documenta II, Kassel, Germany

The Developing Process: Work in Progress towards a New Foundation of Art Teaching, ICA, London, United Kingdom

1957 An Exhibit: Richard Hamilton and Victor Pasmore, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; traveled to ICA, London, United Kingdom

Statements: A Review of British Abstract Art in 1956, ICA, London, United Kingdom

1956 Masters of British Painting 1800-1950, Museum of Modern Art, New York Group 7, This is Tomorrow, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1952 Adams, Blow, Paolozzi, Pasmore, Galleria Origine, Rome, Italy

1951 British Paintings 1925 – 1950, New Burlington Gallery, London, United Kingdom Aspects of British Art, ICA, London, United Kingdom

1948 The Euston Road School and Others, Wakefield Art Gallery, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

1941 Paintings by Members of the Euston Road Group, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom

1939 Contemporary British Art, British Pavilion, Wold Fair, New York

1934 Objective Abstractions, Zwemmer Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1930 XVII Artists, Zwemmer Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Awards and Residencies

1983 Elected Senior Royal Academician, The Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

1977 Awarded Grid Prix d’Honneur for prints at International Graphics Exhibition, Ljubljana, Slovenia

1964 Awarded Carnegie Prize for Painting

1963 Appointed Trustee of the Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1959 Awarded CBE

Teaching Appointments

1954 – 61 Appointed Master of Painting at King’s College, Durham University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

1942 Appointed visiting teacher at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London, United Kingdom

Monographs and Selected Exhibition Catalogues

2016 Crippa, Elena, Alistair Grieve, and Anne Goodchild. Victor Pasmore: Towards a New Reality. London: Lund Humphries, 2016.

2010 Grieve, Alistair. Victor Pasmore. London: Tate Publishing, 2010.

1992 Lynton, Norbert. Victor Pasmore: Paintings and Graphics 1980 – 92. London: Lund Humphries, 1992.

1980 Bowness, Alan, and Luigi Lambertini. Victor Pasmore with a Catalogue Raisonne of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics,1926 – 1979. London: Thames and Hudson, 1980.

1965 Alley, Ronald. Victor Pasmore: Retrospective Exhibition 1925 – 1965. London: Tate Publishing, 1965.

1945 Bell, Clive. Victor Pasmore. London: Penguin Books, 1945.

Museums and Public Collections

Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, United Kingdom

Aberdeen Art Gallery, Aberdeen, United Kingdom

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Arts Council Collection, London, United Kingdom

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom

Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol, United Kingdom

British Council Collection, London, United Kingdom

Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre, Bury, United Kingdom

Higgins Bedford, Bedford, United Kingdom

Courtauld Institute of Art, London, United Kingdom

Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, United Kingdom

Dalhousie Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby, United Kingdom

Deutsche Bank Collection

Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, United Kingdom

Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy

Government Art Collection, London, United Kingdom

Graves Gallery, Sheffield, United Kingdom

Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands

Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds, United Kingdom

Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, United Kingdom

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough, United Kingdom

Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri

Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux, France

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Calais, France

Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland

Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Museum des 20. Jarhunderts, Vienna, Austria

Museum of Fine Arts, Valletta, Malta

Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

National Art Gallery and Dominion Museum, Wellington, New Zealand

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

National Museum, Cardiff, United Kingdom

Nickle Galleries, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Leicester Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester, United Kingdom

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, United Kingdom

Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom

Southampton City Art Gallery, Southampton, United Kingdom

Syracuse University Art Museum, New York, New York

Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom

The Hepworth, Wakefield, United Kingdom

The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds, United Kingdom

The Whitworth, Manchester, United Kingdom

Towner Eastbourne, Eastbourne, United Kingdom

Ulster Museum, Belfast, United Kingdom

University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Victor Pasmore Gallery, Valletta, Malta

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, United Kingdom

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut

York Art Gallery, York, United Kingdom

Victor Pasmore in Blackheath Studio, 1960

Victor Pasmore and Gabriel Caruana.

Photo: John Pasmore.

Victor Pasmore and his mother at Hagar Qim and Mnajdra Temples, Malta.

Photo: John Pasmore.

Marlborough New York

Douglas Kent Walla CEO dkwalla@marlboroughgallery.com

Sebastian Sarmiento Director sarmiento@marlboroughgallery.com

Gabrielle Hespe Assistant to Sebastian Sarmiento hespe@marlboroughgallery.com

Alexa Burzinski Director burzinski@marlboroughgallery.com

Nicole Sisti Director sisti@marlboroughgallery.com

Bianca Clark Director of Graphics clark@marlboroughgallery.com

Parks Busby Graphics Assistant busby@marlboroughgallery.com

Meghan Boyle Kirtley Administrator boyle@marlboroughgallery.com

Greg O’Connor Comptroller greg@marlboroughgallery.com

DiBomba Jean Marie Kazadi Bookkeeper kazadi@marlboroughgallery.com

Paul McDermott Head Registrar mcdermott@marlboroughgallery.com

Sarah Gichan Assistant Registrar gichan@marlboroughgallery.com

Mariah Tarvainen Design Director tarvainen@marlboroughgallery.com

Lukas Hall Archivist hall@marlboroughgallery.com

Marissa Moxley Archivist moxley@marlboroughgallery.com

Rita Peters Front of House peters@marlboroughgallery.com

John Willis Warehouse Manager willis@marlboroughgallery.com

Anthony Nici Master Crater nici@marlboroughgallery.com

Peter Park Exhibition Coordinator park@marlboroughgallery.com

Jeff Serino Preparator serino@marlboroughgallery.com

Brian Burke Preparator burke@marlboroughgallery.com

Matt Castillo Preparator castillo@marlboroughgallery.com

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

Victor Pasmore: The Final Decades

March 16 – May 6, 2023

Marlborough New York

545 West 25th Street

New York, NY 10001 + 1 212 541 4900

marlboroughgallery.com

Victor Pasmore: The Final Decades

© 2023 Martin Gayford

All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Editor/Research: Marissa Moxley

Design: Mariah Tarvainen

Printing and Binding: Permanent Press

All works © The Estate of Victor Pasmore

© 2023 Marlborough Gallery, New York

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and retrieval systems—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper—without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-0-89797-400-4