Remaining in the same private collection since it was acquired directly from Marlborough Gallery in 1966, Relief Construction in White, Black and Ochre is a rare example of Pasmore’s relief constructions. Representing a key moment in his exploration of geometry, structure and the expanded language of abstract art, it is likely to have been one of the very last examples of this much-revered series which began in 1952.

Once celebrated as one of the most accomplished and technically assured figurative painters working in Britain before the Second World War, Victor Pasmore turned to abstraction during the war years; not as a sudden or reactionary break, but a gradual, considered, and ultimately permanent development. For many artists, abstraction emerged in the 1940s partly from a sense that traditional representation could no longer adequately convey the realities of war. For Pasmore, however, abstraction was less a response to destruction than an exploration of new possibilities: a means of reimagining visual experience and constructing a new order from the ruins of the old.

Pasmore’s shift towards abstraction can be traced through his landscape paintings of the River Thames at Hammersmith, which he began in 1943. These works progressively dissolve representation through structure and rhythm rather than expressive distortion. This transition developed over several years and was rooted in a sustained investigation of form, structure, and visual perception. He abandoned figurative painting altogether in 1947, working exclusively in abstraction until his death in 1998. Reflecting in 1960 on this process, Pasmore wrote “The only field which appeared open to rational development was purely abstract form” (quoted in Alan Bowness’s introduction to Bowness A. & Lambertini L., Victor Pasmore, with a Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings, Constructions and Graphics 1926-1979, Thames and Hudson, London, 1980, p. 12).Pasmore’s figurative paintings of the mid-1940s mark a transitional phase, as do the abstract works that followed, leading to the fully non-representational relief constructions he began in 1952. 

Relief Construction in White, Black and Ochre (1964-66) belongs to the late phase of this series, which he abandoned after moving to Malta in 1965, where essential materials became difficult to source. Constructed from oil paint, Perspex, wood, and Formica, intersecting planes project into real space while the restrained palette prioritises structural clarity over expressive colour. As light and shadow shift with the viewer’s movement, spatial experience becomes integral to the work. Drawing on Constructivist principles and modernist architecture, Pasmore treated colour, geometry, and material as components of an architectural system. As he explained, “my pictures are potential symbols and potential poetic or visual metaphors. They are never programmed or preconceived. The whole thing is experimental... it is just a question of investigating whether anything of the kind is possible” (Gowing L. et al., Victor Pasmore, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Conn., 1988). 

This dialogue between artwork, space and viewer reflects Pasmore’s broader interest in integrating modern art with architecture and urban design. By the mid-1960s Pasmore had become a leading advocate for abstraction in Britain, teaching at institutions such as King's College Durham and contributing to ambitious architectural projects including the experimental new town of Peterlee, where he designed large-scale public artworks and landscapes.