Victor Pasmore

Born in Surrey, Pasmore attended evening classes at the Central School while working by day at County Hall in London (1927-37). His early work explored abstraction, but his interest in naturalism was revived in 1937 when he joined William Coldstream and Graham Bell as a founder member of the Euston Road School. Earlier that same year he had opened a teaching studio with Claude Rogers in Fitzroy Street. He exhibited representational landscapes, still life and figures in the 1930s as a member of the London Group, and the London Artists' Association.

Pasmore's work underwent a dramatic change in the 1940s, becoming purely abstract. He made constructions and reliefs of an impeccable finish, as well as producing canvases and collages. Green Abstract, produced during that monumental shift, shows his development of the geometric vocabulary of forms which characterized his mature style.

Head of Painting at Durham University from 1954, Pasmore was architectural designer for the new town of Peterlee, County Durham. A major retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the ICA in 1954, and he exhibited widely in Europe and Scandinavia, as well as being represented at the Venice Biennale (1960).