Il Mostro (The Monster), 1976

Victor Pasmore was a part of the British Constructivism movement, a small group of artists who wanted to create harmony between organic and geometric shapes. In this piece, the viewer is witness to past, present, and future simultaneously. Pasmore begins with a small black dot at the far right of the canvas, and you watch the paint flow in a chaotic fashion. The black figure that overwhelms the piece carries an unknowing all-knowing force. For Pasmore, there is no vision and no agenda, just a starting point.

Pasmore was greatly influenced by the French impressionists in his earlier works which included landscape paintings. In his later years he learned and eventually taught at art schools which paved his way into the British modern art scene. Pasmore pioneered British abstraction and introduced ‘The Developing Process’, a new foundation he taught that influenced the future of British abstraction. The foundation of his method is that the starting point dictates the outcome of the rest of the painting. Therefore, Pasmore starts with the physical paint, and from there decides the style that the painting will take on through a creative process. The paint may take on a different style depending on the type of line or shape that takes form on his canvas. This means there is no absolute vision or idea that goes into the painting until after beginning the process.

Description written by Ethan Garcia and Yuki Ellefson, 2025.