Current exhibitions
12 November 2011 - 29 January 2012
Victor Pasmore: From Constructions to Spray Paint
In the Gallery and Artists' House
Victor Pasmore (1908-98) was a major figure in the revival of Constructivism in Britain following World War II. He believed that all art was derived from nature, but specifically from its underlying structure rather than its surface appearance. His abstract work, often in collage and construction reliefs, pioneered the use of new materials and was sometimes on a large architectural scale. Herbert Read described the development of Pasmore's style as 'the most revolutionary event in post-war British art'.
Victor Pasmore: From Constructions to Spray Paint brings together key pieces from the most important decades of Pasmore's career. His constructed reliefs from the 1960s are amongst his most familiar geometric works in which Pasmore combined ideas of growth and harmony in three dimensions. These will be shown with essentially two-dimensional works combining fine lines and broader bands of colour. In later years, Pasmore returned to a more poetic style of painting, in which colour and organic forms dominated and his subsequent use of spray paint gave an immediate rhythm and movement, which replaced the rigour of his more static compositions.
Victor Pasmore was born in Chelsham, Surrey. Whilst working for the London County Council he studied painting part-time at the Central School and developed a lyrical, figurative style; early support from Sir Kenneth Clark allowed Pasmore to concentrate on his artistic career. By 1948 Pasmore developed a purely abstract style having been influenced initially by British artists such as Nicholson and others associated with Circle, but also the international exhibitions he saw in London of works by Picasso and Klee.
Pasmore became a leading figure in the reform of the fine art education system. The course he founded called 'The Developing Process' was inspired by the Bauhaus movement and became the model adopted for higher arts education across the UK. Pasmore designed a mural for the Festival of Britain and was involved in This is Tomorrow, the seminal exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1957. He participated in documenta II in 1959 and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1960 and again at the São Paulo Bienal in 1965, the same year as his retrospective at Tate. Pasmore was appointed Consulting Director of Urban Design for Peterlee, County Durham in 1954; the 'Pavilion' he designed there in 1970, has been restored recently and is highly regarded as a synthesis of Pasmore's interests in architecture, sculpture and painting. Pasmore was a Royal Academician, a C.B.E. and a Companion of Honour.
