VICTOR PASMORE LINE & SPACE
A selection of works from the retrospective exhibition shown at Hastings Contemporary, 29 April – 31 October 2020
VICTOR PASMORE LINE & SPACE 12 April – 4 June 2021
in association with
FOREWORD Elizabeth Gilmore, Director Hastings Contemporary
“I simply put something down and start from there, and see what happens… I simply let the painting do the talking.”
Victor Pasmore’s words have such resonance for us at Hastings Contemporary, reflecting our commitment to supporting artists and the creative process, and the ethos of our newly expanded, international programme of contemporary and modern art. Pasmore is widely recognised as a major figure in the international abstract movement, his wide-ranging retrospective in Hastings and the more focused exhibition at Marlborough London being a chance to take stock of the artist’s incredibly versatile output over his long career. The momentum to put together this full retrospective was ignited by the rediscovery of three abstract works in the garage of his family home which form the centre piece of this exhibition. Made between 1960-65, the clarity and simplicity of their form and colour palette combine with Pasmore’s characteristically instinctive touch. From the earliest surviving works of lyrical landscapes and figurative paintings, produced while he was a student at Harrow School and then as a young artist attending evening classes at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, to his experiments with constructivist sculpture, spray painting, collage and Perspex, all the way to the recently discovered work made close to his death in 1998, Pasmore’s works reflect and anticipate the major changes that occurred in Western European art and art practice throughout the twentieth century. It is perhaps the scale and boldness of Pasmore’s oeuvre that is most striking and was described by former Tate Director, Alan Bowness, as “a succession of metamorphoses that have at various times dismayed, astonished and delighted his admirers”. Yet also, in all its diversity, his work remains fresh and relevant today, and continues to inspire generations of artists. We are very grateful for the assistance of Frankie Rossi at Marlborough and the Pasmore family, whose commitment and creative generosity have made this important exhibition possible.
VICTOR PASMORE: A PECULIAR BEAUTY Chris Stephens, Director Holburne Museum, Bath Text updated from Victor Pasmore: A Peculiar Beauty, 2019
One of the thrills of being a curator, as opposed to any other sort of art historian, is that one has the opportunity to bring about and to see the revelations that result from bringing one object in close physical relation to another. To select an exhibition, or to hang a gallery, is as much an act of investigation itself as it is the outcome of research.
In my experience, this was most forcibly brought home when I had the privilege of hanging a display of Victor Pasmore’s work at Tate Britain in celebration of the artist’s centenary in 2008. At the beginning of my career at the Tate, in the mid-1990s, I had catalogued in detail the Gallery’s collection of Pasmore paintings, reliefs and constructions. As well as briefly meeting Victor himself, a year or so before he died, this project offered the opportunity of looking closely, researching and thinking in depth about each of the individual works as well as the artist’s career more broadly. With my colleague, I closely scrutinised each of the works in the Tate’s collection. In particular, alerted by our knowledge of Victor’s theoretical interests and one or two books that had influenced him, we measured the works, observing the geometry that seemed to underlie most of their compositions. Geometrical formulae, and in particular the Golden Section, appeared again and again in the pictures’ make-up, one or two of the paintings even having those proportions measured out at the edges of the canvas. We drove our editor mad with our apparent obsession with the Golden Section. He, in turn, drove us mad with his insistence on identifying the exact spot from which Pasmore must have looked west from Hammersmith to Chiswick to have composed The Quiet River, perhaps the most sublimely beautiful of his Thames paintings. Much to my annoyance and surprise, having stomped down to Hammersmith one gloriously sunny afternoon, I found it was possible to find a spot on the riverbank that afforded exactly the view in the painting. With a further visit to the local archive, I was also able to establish that, despite all the mysterious poetry of the misty sunset with its phantasmal figures, many of Pasmore’s forms could be precisely identified: the twin masts of a ship moored permanently on the north side of Chiswick Eyot, for example,
“ALL ART IS THE SEARCH FOR THE SUBLIME AND THE BEAUTIFUL.” Victor Pasmore, 1964
or the protruding canopy of the malt factory, on the right-hand
by Clark. Explaining to the Art Gallery of South Australia why
edge, the smell from which then dominated the riverside.
he proposed for acquisition so many paintings by Pasmore,
Empirical, visual facts and flights of the imagination co-habit comfortably, naturally, in Pasmore’s art. This is nicely illustrated by one of the many great, early works that once belonged to Pasmore’s foremost patron Kenneth Clark. The small 1945 Penguin Modern Painters book on the artist, with an introduction by Clive Bell, includes Clark’s A Winter Morning, 1944, one of numerous paintings Pasmore made based on his garden at Hammersmith Terrace. The 1980 catalogue raisonné reproduces a painting – The Bird Garden: Winter Morning, 1944-6 – which, though clearly different, seems to share certain identical details. The explanation, I discovered, is that a couple of years after Clark bought the painting, Victor borrowed it back and, when it was returned, it transpired that he had reworked the picture, removing a number of the more mundane details, adding some elements and, most fundamentally, turning the whole into a snow scene. Observed reality and artistic construction compete or converge in Pasmore’s art, and that is as true for the abstract work as it is for the representational.
Clark wrote that he believed him to be one of the two or three most important British painters of the twentieth-century but added, pointedly, that he doubted the artist would ever produce such good work again. Pasmore, in this narrative, had shifted camp and abandoned a representational art that drew on the paintings of the past for a constructivist utopia that continued the ideals of the 1930s into the 1950s. The problem with this story is twofold. Firstly, by rightly seeking to position Pasmore in an international movement, critics and historians risked reinforcing the idea of British belatedness. Despite attempts in recent years to draw parallels between constructivist abstraction in Britain and in Latin America, this view persists, I fear. Secondly, this Pauline view of Pasmore’s development obscures the essential, personal qualities that continue in his art from before the Damascene conversion through to the decades afterwards. When I planned that centenary display of all of the Tate’s Pasmore paintings and reliefs in a single space, I imagined having to hang the room chronologically so that a visitor, as they passed through the room, would journey from the
That Pasmore ‘going abstract’ in the late 1940s marked a key
atmospheric interior of Lamplight of 1941 to the organic
moment in modern British art history has become a cliché.
abstraction of the spray-painted Green Earth, 1979-80. This
It was grabbed, I suspect, by the advocates of a modernist
room would hinge around some invisible line across the middle
abstraction, notably Herbert Read, as a symbol of their victory
where the stylised landscapes of 1950 interleaved with the
over those fighting for a more moderate modern figuration, led
Picasso-esque abstract collages of a year earlier; or should
“OBSERVED REALITY AND ARTISTIC CONSTRUCTION COMPETE OR CONVERGE IN PASMORE’S ART, AND THAT IS AS TRUE FOR THE ABSTRACT WORK AS IT IS FOR THE REPRESENTATIONAL.” Chris Stephens, 2019
Indeed, as the selection of works in this exhibition makes clear, it was in the 1960s that Pasmore seems to have accepted the consistency running through his work and capitalised upon it. A profile in the May 1964 edition of the Studio magazine recorded his return to painting, the artist noting that he now recognised that he was at heart a painter – not a sculptor or an architect (though he had been designing an area of Peterlee New Town for some years by then) – and that ‘virtually all the elements of my later stages’ could be seen in his early landscapes. In a small space of time, around 1964/5, we see Pasmore working with paint, making constructions with elements that project out towards the viewer or which reach down or across beyond the edge of the backboard, and reprising some of his earlier constructed forms. He seems to play with this new eclecticism: he paints on plywood, leaving the support visible so that the painting appears like a construction (an effect enhanced when he bends the board); he begins to combine the new painting style of organic masses of colour with constructed elements; he progresses from the constructions that reach out horizontally by painting forms which exceed the edges of their support, drawing a meandering line from the painted board, over its edge and on to
one hang it linearly, so that a visitor walked around the room,
the backboard, in a work like Linear Image with Five Colours, as
not through it? In the event, when the works were all brought
if interpreting literally Paul Klee’s idea of ‘taking a line for a walk’.
together in the same room, the great revelation was that this notion of a fundamental divide was complete nonsense. It became immediately apparent that all of the works, whether painted with brush or spray-can, even if painted or constructed, in wood, Perspex or Formica, sat comfortably together because they shared the same principles and the same sensibility. It is, no doubt, a revelation that would have been obvious to Victor and, perhaps, to any artist.
So Pasmore, in the 1960s, synthesised different elements of his art. Underlying compositional principles and a dynamic but managed asymmetry that seems to confound those principles are two of the characteristics that run through all of that work. More significant and distinctive, however, is something less definable, more poetic which unites everything he made. Terry Frost once told me how Pasmore had drummed the importance of the Golden Section into him as a student at
Each of the works has an internal dynamic, based on but not
Camberwell in the late 1940s, adding that only late in life had
strictly dictated by theories of geometry. We know Pasmore
Pasmore realised that the ratio he had been using for most
was reading such texts as Jay Hambidge’s The Elements of
of his career was actually slightly wrong. Frost’s anecdotes
Dynamic Symmetry after it was republished in 1948 but it is
were famously more amusing than they were accurate but
clear he used geometrical proportions to compose his work
it is the case, in my experience, that the geometric relations
earlier than that. To these theories of geometry and proportion
in Pasmore’s compositions are often almost, but not quite,
was added his study of theories of growth, in particular the
precise. For all his fascination with theory and his use of
writing of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, whose On Growth
geometry, Pasmore was first and foremost an intuitive
and Form had been embraced by numerous artists following
artist. While drawing upon such formal disciplines and
its republication during the war. Thompson’s account of the
fundamental notions, he recognised the primary importance
way a ‘peculiar beauty’ resulted from the natural, incremental
of the individual touch of the artist. And what a touch he
development of organic form, informed the nature of
had! Whether the gentle dab of oil paint, the cutting of a line
Pasmore’s constructions and, later, those paintings in which
through Formica or the placement of an elongated member
the composition appears to have been determined by a
protruding over the edge of a relief, every move Pasmore made
progressive development from or around a single element
embodies his quirky and wholly distinctive sensibility. He might
as epitomised in the newly-uncovered mural that he made
have based his works on those theories and rules but he knew
for his 1965 Tate retrospective.
he could improve upon them with his instinctive poet’s eye.
LIST OF WORKS
Farleigh Church in Spring, 1926 oil on panel 31.1 x 43.9 cm Portrait Sketch: Florence Head, 1935 oil on canvas 45.7 x 35.5 cm Girl with a Hand Mirror, 1938 oil on canvas 61 x 50.8 cm Girl Combing Her Hair (The Artist’s Wife), c. 1940 oil on canvas 61 x 51 cm Lily, 1941 oil on canvas 51 x 30.5 cm Miss Humphries, 1944 oil on canvas 50.8 x 40.7 cm Abstract in White, Black, Brown and Ochre, 1950 collage 40 x 38.4 cm
Abstract in White, Black and Maroon, 1962 projective relief, paint on curved wood and plastic 61 x 121.9 x 21.5 cm Linear Composition, 1962-65 pencil and gravure on board 152.5 x 152.5 cm Blue Development, 1965 oil on board 152.5 x 152.5 cm Abstract in Black, White and Mahogany, 1965-66 projective relief, paint on wood and plastic 122 x 122 x 36 cm Points of Contact, Green Development, 1966 projective relief, oil on plastic and wood 123 x 123 x 27.5 cm Grey Symphony, 1968-77 oil on board 240 x 183 cm Private Collection
Linear Construction, 1969 oil on plywood 152.5 x 152.5 cm Private Collection Square Image, 1971 projective relief, paint on board 80.5 x 80.5 cm Green Development, 1969 oil on curved plywood 122 x 50.8 cm Private Collection Black Rhythm, 1976-77 projective relief, paint on wood 136.5 x 51 cm Brown Symphony, 1979 oil on board 75.5 x 211 cm The Milky Way, 1987 paint on board 122 x 365.8 cm
Green Development in Two Movements, 1989 oil and spray paint on board 183 x 122 cm Voice of the Ocean, 1989 paint on panel 243.8 x 122 cm Now That You Have Reached the Sky, 1993 oil and pencil on board 243.8 x 121.9 cm Untitled, 1993 oil, spray paint and pencil on board 121.9 x 243.8 cm Untitled, 1996 oil, spray paint and pencil on board 121.9 x 121.9 cm Untitled, c. 1996 oil spray paint and charcoal on board 121.9 x 213.3 cm
Farleigh Church in Spring, 1926 oil on panel 31.1 x 43.9 cm
Portrait Sketch: Florence Head, 1935 oil on canvas 45.7 x 35.5 cm
Girl with a Hand Mirror, 1938 oil on canvas 61 x 50.8 cm
Girl Combing Her Hair (The Artist’s Wife), c. 1940 oil on canvas 61 x 51 cm
Lily, 1941 oil on canvas 51 x 30.5 cm
Miss Humphries, 1944 oil on canvas 50.8 x 40.7 cm
Abstract in White, Black, Brown and Ochre, 1950 collage 40 x 38.4 cm
Abstract in White, Black and Maroon, 1962 projective relief, paint on curved wood and plastic 61 x 121.9 x 21.5 cm
Linear Composition, 1962-65 pencil and gravure on board 152.5 x 152.5 cm
Blue Development, 1965 oil on board 152.5 x 152.5 cm
Abstract in Black, White and Mahogany, 1965-66 projective relief, paint on wood and plastic 122 x 122 x 36 cm
Points of Contact, Green Development, 1966 projective relief, oil on plastic and wood 123 x 123 x 27.5 cm
Grey Symphony, 1968-77 oil on board 240 x 183 cm Private Collection
Linear Construction, 1969 oil on plywood 152.5 x 152.5 cm Private Collection
Square Image, 1971 projective relief, paint on board 80.5 x 80.5 cm
Green Development, 1969 oil on curved plywood 122 x 50.8 cm Private Collection
Black Rhythm, 1976-77 projective relief, paint on wood 136.5 x 51 cm
Brown Symphony, 1979 oil on board 75.5 x 211 cm
The Milky Way, 1987 paint on board 122 x 365.8 cm
Green Development in Two Movements, 1989 oil and spray paint on board 183 x 122 cm
Voice of the Ocean, 1989 paint on panel 243.8 x 122 cm
Now That You Have Reached the Sky, 1993 oil and pencil on board 243.8 x 121.9 cm
Untitled, 1993 oil, spray paint and pencil on board 121.9 x 243.8 cm
Untitled, 1996 oil, spray paint and pencil on board 121.9 x 121.9 cm
Untitled, c. 1996 oil spray paint and charcoal on board 121.9 x 213.3 cm
BIOGRAPHY 1908
Born in Surrey, UK
1998
Died in 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 2020-21
Victor Pasmore: Line & Space, Hastings Contemporary, Hastings, United Kingdom; travelled to Marlborough, London, 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; travelled 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
1962
1995
1961
1992
1960
1990-91
Victor Pasmore: Paintings and Constructions, XXX Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
Visual Music: Victor Pasmore, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, United Kingdom Victor Pasmore New Work: Paintings, Etchings and Lithographs, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom Victor Pasmore, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, United Kingdom Victor Pasmore: Nature into Art. Paintings and Constructions, 1940-1990, Center for International Arts, New York, United States; travelled to Serpentine Gallery, London, United Kingdom
1988-89
Retrospective Exhibition, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, United States; travelled to Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., United States
1986
Victor Pasmore: Graphics Exhibition, Galleria 2RC, Rome, Italy
Retrospective Exhibition, Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, Germany Victor Pasmore: Recent Paintings and Constructions, Marlborough New London Gallery, London, United Kingdom Solo Exhibition, Victor Pasmore, 1958-60, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
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, Marlborough Fine Art, London, United Kingdom
Victor Pasmore, Paintings and Constructions, 1944-54, ICA Gallery, London, United Kingdom
1980
1953
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
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
Paintings and Constructions 1960-1967, Graphics 1965-1967, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, United Kingdom; travelled to Hatton Gallery, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
2013
1967
Concrete Parallels, Centro Brasileiro Britânico, São Paulo, Brazil
Solo Exhibition, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York, United States 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
Basic Design, Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom; travelled to Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
2012
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, Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, Germany
1985
St Ives 1939-64, Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom
1968
Relief/Construction/Relief, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, United States
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, Brazil
1964
Documenta II, 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, Netherlands
1939
Contemporary British Art, British Pavilion, Wold Fair, New York, United States
1934
Objective Abstractions, Zwemmer Gallery, London, United Kingdom
1930
XVII Artists, Zwemmer Gallery, London, United Kingdom
AWARDS/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, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United Stated
1963
Appointed Trustee of the Tate Gallery, London, United Kingdom
1959
Awarded CBE
TEACHING APPOINTMENTS 1954-61
1959
Appointed Master of Painting at King’s College, Durham University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
The Developing Process: Work in Progress towards a New Foundation of Art Teaching, ICA, London, United Kingdom
1942
Documenta II, Kassel, Germany
1957
An Exhibit: Richard Hamilton and Victor Pasmore, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; travelled 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, United States 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
Appointed visiting teacher at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London, United Kingdom
SELECTED LITERATURE 2016
Anne Goodchild, Alistair Grieve and Elena Crippa (eds)., Victor Pasmore: Towards a New Reality (London: Lund Humphries, 2016)
2010
Alistair Grieve, Victor Pasmore (London: Tate Publishing, 2010)
1992
Norbert Lynton, Victor Pasmore: Paintings and Graphics 1980-92 (London: Lund Humphries, 1992)
1980
Alan Bowness and Luigi Lambertini, Victor Pasmore with a Catalogue Raisonne of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics, 1926-1979 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980)
1965
Ronald Alley, Victor Pasmore: Retrospective Exhibition 19251965, Tate Gallery, exh. cat. (London: Tate Publishing, 1965)
1945
Clive Bell, Victor Pasmore (London: Penguin Books, 1945)
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ISBN: 978-1-909707-61-0 Cover: Untitled, 1996 Photography: Luke Walker and Mark Dalton Photographs of the Artist: John Pasmore Design: Bright Design London Print: Impress Print Services © 2021 Marlborough
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