Artist Database

Pioneering British abstract artist Victor Pasmore was born in Chelsham, Surrey, UK, in 1908. He studied in London at the Harrow Art School (1923 to 1926) and Central School of Arts and Design (1927 to 1932). While he dabbled in abstraction in those years, his early career was founded on landscapes and figurative art as inspired by the French Impressionists. Pasmore participated in his first exhibition in 1930, a group show at Zwemmer Gallery in London, and three years later he held his first solo show at The Cooling Galleries, London. By 1947, encouraged by British artist Ben Nicholson, he turned to abstraction and would continue to grow and experiment in this style for the rest of his career. In 1960, Pasmore represented Britain with a solo show at the Venice Biennale, an event that garnered him international recognition. Notably, he was awarded the Carnegie Prize for Painting in 1964 and elected Senior Royal Academician of The Royal Academy of Arts in 1983.

In addition to being a prominent artist, Pasmore was also an influential educator. In 1937, he co-founded the Euston Road School alongside William Coldstream and Claude Rogers. From 1943 to 1949, he served as the director of painting at Camberwell School of Art and was a lecturer at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1949. Between 1954 and 1961, he was the head of the paintings department at King’s College, Newcastle upon Tyne (now Newcastle University), where he established a groundbreaking basic design course that was adopted by other arts and design schools throughout the country. Pasmore was also concerned with introducing the public to abstract art, which he was able to do through his role as the consulting director of urban design for the town of Peterlee, County Durham (1955 to 1977). He is represented in many prominent collections worldwide, including the Victor Pasmore Gallery in Malta, where he established a second home.