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 PasmoreVictor Pasmore: The Final Decades
Martin GayfordIn 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. 1970sIn 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.
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.
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
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
Green Development in Two Movements, 1989
oil and spray paint
711/4 × 48 in. / 181 × 122 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 HorsBiography
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
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