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Edwin John Victor Pasmore, CH, CBE (3 December 190823 January 1998) was a British artist. He pioneered the development of abstract art in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s.
In the Second World War, Pasmore was a conscientious objector.Central Board for Conscientious Objectors, Bulletin, October 1942, November 1942. Having been refused recognition by his Local Tribunal, he was called up for military service in 1942. He refused orders and was court martialled and sentenced to 123 days imprisonment. The sentence qualified him to go to the Appellate Tribunal in Edinburgh, which allowed him unconditional exemption from military service.
Beginning in 1947, he developed a purely abstract style under the influence of Ben Nicholson and other artists associated with , becoming a pioneering figure of the revival of interest in Constructivism in Britain following the War. Pasmore's abstract work, often in collage and construction of reliefs, pioneered the use of new materials and was sometimes on a large architectural scale. Herbert Read described Pasmore's new style as "The most revolutionary event in post-war British art".Ford, Boris (ed.) (1988). The Cambridge Guide to the Arts in Britain: Volume 9, Since the Second World War. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. p. 104.
In 1950, he was commissioned to design an abstract mural for a bus depot in Kingston upon Thames and the following year Pasmore contributed a mural to the Festival of Britain that promoted a number of the British Constructivists.
Pasmore was a supporter of fellow artist Richard Hamilton, giving him a teaching job in Newcastle and contributing a constructivist structure to the exhibition This Is Tomorrow in collaboration with Ernő Goldfinger and Helen Phillips. Pasmore was commissioned to make a mural for the new Newcastle Civic Centre. His interest in the synthesis of art and architecture was given free hand when he was appointed Consulting Director of Architectural Design for Peterlee development corporation in 1955. Pasmore's choices in this area proved controversial; the centerpiece of the town design became an abstract public art structure of his design, the Apollo Pavilion. The structure became the focus for local criticism over the failures of the Development Corporation but Pasmore remained a defender of his work, returning to the town to face critics of the Pavilion at a public meeting in 1982. After many years of neglect the work was restored in 2009 with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Pasmore represented Britain at the 1961 Venice Biennale, was participating artist at the Documenta 1959 in Kassel and was a trustee of the Tate Gallery, donating a number of works to the collection. He gave a lecture on J.M.W. Turner as 'first of the moderns' to the Turner Society, of which he was elected a vice president in 1975.
Between 1950 and 1954 Pasmore taught at the Central School of Art.
From 1954 to 1961 he taught at Kings College, University of Durham, in Newcastle upon Tyne (now Newcastle University). Radical innovation in art, architecture and art education in the North East. There he developed a radical art and design course inspired by the 'basic course' of the Bauhaus that became the model for higher arts education across the UK. He was succeeded by Richard Hamilton.
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