Hero of post-war art dies, aged 89

Victor Pasmore, one of the heroes of British post-war art, has died in Malta, aged 89.

His prints and paintings are familiar to any lover of abstract art. But he began in the tradition of painters like Bonnard and Sickert, and his death slices away one of the last connections with the pre-war Euston Road School, linked in turn to the great post-impressionist revolution.

After the Second World War, Pasmore broke with figurative painting and turned to free, luminous abstract work. His linking of soft, often blue and green masses with wiry lines and beautifully balanced circles of intense colour recalls the liberated and joyful work of Matisse. He was a Companion of Honour, his work is in many important public collections and in recent years his prints and paintings have been one of the delights at the Royal Academy's summer exhibitions.

But his relations with official art and the general public have not always been easy. From his post as Master of Painting at Durham University in 1958 he thundered: "The decadent art is in the Royal Academy. There always have been charlatans in art ... In the junk shops there must be five done in the traditional style for every rubbishy modern picture produced."

His Apollo Pavilion, an abstract concrete structure in Peterlee, Co Durham, provoked a battle between English Heritage, which wanted to list it as an internationally important masterpiece, and local people, who described it as a "slimy old bridge'' and wanted it demolished.

- Andrew Marr