Victor Pasmore, R.A.

Acquired directly from the Artist by the previous owners, 1958
Their sale, Christie's London, 18th November 2005, lot 42, where acquired by the present owners

Structurally sound. The work has recently benefitted from a light clean. There are minor spots of surface dirt to the crevices, and very minor surface scratches and marks inherent with the nature of the artist's techniques and materials. There are very slight scuffs to the painted surface of some of the edges of the raised elements, visible upon very close inspection. There is a small area of possible loss to the top right corner of the pink area, and further very minor signs of glue staining apparent. There is a very minor flaw in the wood visible to the bottom left corner of the large brown rectangle. This excepting the work appears to be in very good overall condition. Ultraviolet light reveals some isolated flecks of fluorescence to the backing panel at the left edge and bottom right hand corner and elsewhere, and a further five very small spots to the top left raised element, to the aforementioned area of loss to the pink area and the bottom edge of the bottom right white element. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any queries regarding the present work.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The art historian Alastair Grieve's authoritative book on Constructed Abstract art in post-war Britain is subtitled 'A Neglected Avant-Garde’.  At the time of writing – in 2005 - this was certainly true, but in the intervening years the landscape has changed. The phenomenal Zero sale here at Sotheby's in 2010 radically altered the wider perception of ‘New Realist' art from both the Continent and Latin America, which had also  operated under the radar somewhat and this interest has inevitably led to a re-evaluation of these artists’s British counterparts, who were similarly active on an international basis within what was a global movement.

Pasmore has always been considered as the 'leader' of the British contingent, not only an influential artist who had switched seemingly effortlessly from figuration (albeit figuration with a deft, pared-down, abstract sensibility) to Constructive art within a year (1949-1950), but also as a highly influential teacher, whose Basic Design course, developed with Richard Hamilton at Newcastle University in the 1960s, altered art teaching in Britain, specifically in terms of what an artwork could be  and what it could be made of. And yet his constructed works, even at their most austere and industrial, are never ordered purely by a mathematical or theoretical matrix . Like his great friend and colleague Adrian Heath – who steadfastly remained a painter, in oils, and thus more Constructivist than Constructionist) Pasmore used systems only as a starting-off point, assembling his work as much with the painter’s ‘dead-reckoning’ of harmony, balance and proportion.

This can be seen clearly in his early painted reliefs, of which Abstract in White, Black, Pink (Maroon) and Ochre is a fine example. The central black vertical provides the simplest of structures, on which the horizontal elements hang in point and counterpoint. But it is the colour - the orange-maroon and dirty pink, held in tension by the glossy black and simultaneously released by the surrounding white - that is the key. As Pasmore wrote -  with usual unsurprising clarity, in a statement published in the Sunday Times in 1961 that was expressly aimed at a mass readership:

'In abstract art both form and image are completely autonomous... An abstract painting or sculpture therefore is its own object and its own image; consequently any relationship which it makes with the spectator is also real and palpable… at once human and intimate as well as dynamic. Whereas in representational art the spectator is confined to a point which is always at a distance from the object, in abstract form he must handle, feel, move around and get into the work if he is to apprehend fully the intentions of the artist' (quoted in full in Alastair Grieve (ed.), Victor Pasmore - Writings and Interviews, London 2010, p. 80). 

The form of the relief is essential to creating this dynamic relationship between viewer/object and as Pasmore’s work progressed in the 50s and 60s, the three-dimensional quality became increasingly pronounced and sophisticated, as can be seen in Abstract in White, Black and Ochre (lot 12). In works such as Abstract in White, Black, Pink (Maroon) and Ochre, this projection into the physical space of the viewer is more contained and the reading of the work more two-dimensional, about the harmony and dissonance of the varying-sized blocks of colour. However, through being constructed (rather than merely painted), the eye is checked from its natural  desire to arrange the elements into a figure/ground relationship, so that the experience of colour and form remains pure.