Victor Pasmore is regarded as one of the most prominent leading figures in the modern art movement of the 20th century both locally and internationally.

During the three decades he spent living in Malta, Pasmore underwent an artistically experimental phase, during which he produced some of his most notable work.

The artwork he created during this period will be exhibited during The Eye & the Symbol, The Permanent Collection, at the Victor Pasmore Gallery at APS House in Valletta.

Two Lines from a Ballad of Kipling. Photo: Lisa Attard

An array of never-seen-before artworks and familiar ones will be showcased during this exhibition, taking viewers on a journey that examines Pasmore’s relationship with the Maltese islands through the various characteristics, mediums and materials he utilised during the final three decades of his life.

“Pasmore tirelessly sought to present his art as a creation that was not restricted by a sense of place and time; however, it’s possible that being so close to Malta’s primitive and ancient past may have subconsciously awakened untapped aspects in the artist’s mind, creating a quasi-nostalgic abstraction of place, space and time within Pasmore’s later work,” says the gallery.

In 1966, Pasmore and his wife Wendy moved to Malta and chose a secluded farmhouse in Gudja as their permanent residence. This provided Pasmore with the closed confines he craved to develop new art forms and rediscover light and colour.

Untitled [IV]. Photo: Lisa Attard

While living in Malta, Pasmore used the many hardware stores around the island from which he regularly sourced materials to create his abstract works.

In her reflections on Pasmore’s abstract compositions, Giulia Privitelli recalls the artist’s mission statement which he laid bare in his article ‘The Artist Speaks’ in 1951: “I have tried to compose as music is composed, with formal elements which, in themselves, have no descriptive qualities at all”.

“Pasmore’s view of abstract art − like music, in fact, that cannot be particularly defined, or like a composition that does not generate one set feeling or one set memory − is one that does not seek to tell the viewer anything specific,” explains Privitelli in her catalogue essay.

“That would be a kind of imposition, a kind of constraint,” she continues. “Rather, in a way, abstract art, in this view, humbles itself to the point of mattering less than what the viewer finally perceives and makes of that symbol; it is free of the artist who made it and of the surface that carries it: ‘what mattered initially’, tells us Pasmore, ‘was not what our scribble would represent, but what it might become’.”

Untitled [III]. Photo: Lisa Attard

Pasmore describes his new home Malta, “with its views of the sea as seen from the cliffs, as if it were itself a setting extracted from Homer’s Odyssey,” she continues. “A poetic lure trickled out of the island, connecting it to a mysterious and remote past.”

In fact, Pasmore writes in 1972 that “what, perhaps, is relevant to my new painting in Malta is that the close and constant proximity of the ancient, mythological and Neolithic past has reinforced my orientation from the physics of art to its biological and psychological content”.

Abstract in White, Black and Umber. Photo: Lisa Attard

The Victor Pasmore Foundation

The Victor Pasmore Foundation was set up in July 2012 by Victor Pasmore’s wife, Wendy, and his two children, John and Mary Ellen (Nice), to conserve and promote his art as a significant testimony to 20th-century art.

In 2014, the Central Bank of Malta agreed to permanently host Pasmore’s work at the Polverista Gallery in Valletta.

Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti took over the collection’s management the following year, bringing to light the Maltese modern art movement and Pasmore’s influence on its direction.

In 2020, further to an agreement with the Victor Pasmore Foundation, Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti became the custodians of the artworks.

Gallery views of the Victor Pasmore gallery in Valletta. Photo: Lisa Attard

In 2021, Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti transformed the former APS headquarters at 275, St Paul Street, Valletta, into a state-of-the-art gallery that would house the Victor Pasmore collection. Nowadays, Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti manages the Victor Pasmore Gallery, which seeks to preserve the artist’s legacy through an engaging range of exhibitions, events and programmes showcasing the work of Pasmore and his Maltese peers.

Gallery views of the Victor Pasmore gallery in Valletta. Photo: Lisa Attard

Furthermore, the gallery is dedicated to researching, assisting and participating in the realisation of further studies into Pasmore’s work. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition In Search of Line, which closed in March, showcased the institution’s aim to explore new ways of engaging with 20th-century Maltese art and offered a taster of future projects.

The Victor Pasmore Gallery will be open from Tuesdays to Thursdays between 10am and 5pm (last entry at 4pm), Fridays between 2 and 7pm (last entry at 6pm) and Saturdays between 10am and 3pm (last entry at 2pm). Tickets can be purchased at the door. The Victor Pasmore Gallery is located at APS House, 275, St Paul Street, Valletta. For further information about the exhibition, please visit victorpasmoregallery.com/the-eye-and-the-symbol/