Brown Symphony 1979

Victor Pasmore made this painting, Brown Symphony, with oils, likely after a lot of earlier work. Look at the color—it’s like a deep, earthy resonance, punctuated by blues that kinda float there. Imagine Pasmore, maybe after years of landscape painting, pushing back against what he knew, trying to find some kind of…architecture? You can almost feel him deciding to put that square there, then answering with those round shapes and that line, bopping and weaving! It looks like the whole thing could fall apart if you poked it, like a mobile or a house of cards. It's like he’s saying something, like, hey, Mondrian, let’s loosen up a little, let’s get messy! It's this ongoing talk between painters across time. It's not really a symphony but more like a jam session.