The Victor Pasmore Gallery at APS House in St Paul Street, Valletta – named after the eminent artist who is regarded as a leading figure in the local and international modern art movement of the 20th century – has added a number of new artworks to its permanent collection that have never been seen in public before.
The exhibition, titled The Eye & the Symbol, which includes the permanent collection, take “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,” the gallery shared.
Pasmore – who lived in Malta for three decades in a secluded farmhouse in Gudja with his wife until his death in 1998 – experienced an artistically experimental phase during this time.
In their curatorial note, the gallery explains that “[He] 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.”
In the artist’s own words from 1972, he stated “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.”
The gallery and artist’s collection are managed by Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti, who became custodians of his artworks in 2020 following an agreement with the Victor Pasmore Foundation, which was set up in 2012 by the artist’s wife, Wendy, and his two children, John and Mary Ellen, to conserve and promote his work as a significant testimony to 20th-century art.
![Untitled[III]. Photo by Lisa Attard](https://designdispatch.mt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/VP-UntitledIII-scaled.jpg)
In 2021, Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti transformed the former APS headquarters in St Paul Street, Valletta, into a state-of-the-art gallery that would house the permanent Victor Pasmore collection. To find out more, visit Patrimonju.org.
Main photo: Joanna Demarco
