Wendy Pasmore (née Blood) was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1915, moving to England with her family as a child. Her early artistic career was largely curtailed due to family responsibilities (she married the influential artist, Victor Pasmore in 1940) and her art teaching roles during the 1940s and mid-1950s, though she latterly resumed painting and exhibiting. She was a member of the Women’s International Art Club and The London Group and exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy of Arts; she was also instrumental in establishing the foundation course that eventually became Leeds College of Art.
Painter Wendy Pasmore (née Blood) was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1915, moving to England with her family as a child. In 1933 she convinced her father, an Army officer, to allow her to attend art school in Chelmsford, before moving to London to pursue her artistic career. Here she met and modelled for, fellow artist, Victor Pasmore, whom she married in 1940. Victor was a well-established artist who had been elected to the London Artist’s Association and The London Group in the early 1930s and had co-founded the influential Euston Road School in 1938, which advocated a realist approach in painting and was comprised of artists who either taught or studied at the School of Painting and Drawing at 316 Euston Road in London. However, despite this early stance, both Victor and Wendy evolved an increasingly abstract approach to their work.
The couple went to live first in Chiswick Mall in west London and in 1948 moved eastwards to Blackheath. Busy with her two children to care for and her art teaching roles, during the 1940s and early 1950s Pasmore painted only occasionally. In 1952 her work was included in a group show at the prestigious Redfern Gallery and In 1955, she was elected a member of the Women’s International Art Club, an organisation founded in 1900 with the aim of helping women artists to show their artwork to the general public. The Club held annual exhibitions in prominent galleries and counted among its members Sonia Delaunay, Elisabeth Frink, Gwen John and Lee Krasner. Pasmore exhibited also with The London Group from 1956, becoming a member in 1958. The Times observed of Pasmore's 1960 exhibition with The London Group: 'Far more persuasive in structure and vigorous in colour are some of the abstracts, among which should be singled out the admirable pair by Mrs Wendy Pasmore' (The Times 1960, p. 16). Having held teaching posts at a number of art colleges, including those in Sunderland and Scarborough, Pasmore settled in Leeds, where she worked with Terry Frost and others to establish the foundation course that later became the Leeds College of Art. In 1962 her Oval Motif in Grey and Ochre (1961, Tate Gallery) featured in the Contemporary Art Society exhibition held at the Tate Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery, and which, according to The Observer revealed 'her expressive touch and relish in the creamy substance of pigment' (Wallis 1962, p. 23). With growing interest in her work, the Molton & Lords Galleries in London's South Molton Street presented a retrospective in 1963 covering two decade's of Pasmore's work (the original Molton Gallery had been established by German émigré dealer, Annely Juda in 1960). Latterly, she also exhibited annually at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition from 1980 to 2001.
Following a visit to Malta in 1965, the Pasmores fell in love with the island and decided to acquire a 17th-century farmhouse named Dar Gamri, near Gudja, settling there in 1966. In 2014, the capital city, Valletta, became home to the Victor Pasmore Gallery, a project that had long been pursued by Pasmore and the Pasmore Foundation. Wendy Pasmore died in Malta in 2015. Unlike her husband Victor Pasmore, she is underrepresented in public collections – an imbalance that in part reflects the difficulties faced by many women artists in postwar Britain. Her work is held in UK public collections including the Arts Council Collection and Tate. With the aim of reassessing her role as an artist, Jenna Burlingham Fine Art in Newbury, Berkshire, held a retrospective exhibition in 2018.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Wendy Pasmore]
Publications related to [Wendy Pasmore] in the Ben Uri Library