Other artists whose work was influenced by him include Helaine Blumenfeld, Drago Marin Cherina, Lynn Chadwick, Eduardo Paolozzi, Bernard Meadows, Reg Butler, William Turnbull, Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, and Geoffrey Clarke. By the end of the 1940s, he produced sculptures increasingly by modelling, working out the shape in clay or plaster before casting the final work in bronze using the lost wax technique. During the war, Moore produced powerful drawings of Londoners sleeping in the London Underground while sheltering from the Blitz. In 1934, Moore visited Spain; he visited the cave of Altamira (which he described as the "Royal Academy of Cave Painting"), Madrid, Toledo and Pamplona. He is best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. Nicknamed Old Flo, it was installed on the Stifford council estate in 1962 but was vandalised and moved to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1997. In 1928, despite his own self-described "extreme reservations", he accepted his first public commission for West Wind for the London Underground Building at 55 Broadway in London, joining the company of Jacob Epstein and Eric Gill. About Henry Moore. [28] Kenneth Clark, the chairman of the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC), had previously tried to recruit Moore as a full-time salaried war artist and now agreed to purchase some of the shelter drawings and issued contracts for further examples. Monumental, abstract, and figural, his cast bronzes imply human and animal form through smoothly twisting organic curves and … Necessary - These cookies are essential so that you can move around the website and use its features. The next generation was constantly compared against him, and reacted by challenging his legacy, his "establishment" credentials and his position. "Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism 1945–55". Barassi, Sebastiano. [14], In 1924, Moore won a six-month travelling scholarship which he spent in Northern Italy studying the great works of Michelangelo, Giotto di Bondone, Giovanni Pisano and several other Old Masters. This time, the project was completed and Family Group became Moore's first large-scale public bronze. He was an autodidact with an interest in music and literature. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the Site. [29] In August 1941 WAAC commissioned Moore to draw miners working underground at the Wheldale Colliery in Yorkshire, where his father had worked at the start of the century. [77] He turned down a knighthood in 1951 because he felt that the bestowal would lead to a perception of him as an establishment figure and that "such a title might tend to cut me off from fellow artists whose work has aims similar to mine". Henry Moore RA RWS was an English marine and landscape painter. [citation needed], Given to the City of London by Moore and the Contemporary Art Society in 1967, Knife Edge Two Piece 1962–65 is displayed in Abingdon Street Gardens, opposite the Houses of Parliament, where its regular appearance in the background of televised news reports from Westminster makes it Moore's most prominent piece in Britain. Henry Moore - Henry Moore - Later years: Critics who had begun to think that Moore, the revolutionary sculptor, had been tamed, were proven wrong by the appearance in 1950 of the first of Moore’s series of bronze standing figures, with their harsh and angular pierced forms and distinct feeling of menace. Mature Period. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know. Google analytics - These cookies help us to understand how visitors use our Site. [1] Henry was the seventh of eight children in a family that often struggled with poverty. When Moore's niece asked why his sculptures had such simple titles, he replied, All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. [70], In December 2005, thieves entered a courtyard at the Henry Moore Foundation and stole a cast of Moore's Reclining Figure 1969–70 (LH 608) – a 3.6 metre-long, 2.1-tonne bronze sculpture. [74], Moore presented 36 sculptures, as well as drawings, maquettes and other works to the Tate Gallery in 1978. [63] Two men were jailed for a year in 2012 for stealing a sculpture called Sundial (1965) and the bronze plinth of another work, also from the foundation's estate. The site and the collection are now owned by the Henry Moore Foundation. The Foundation was established to encourage the public appreciation of the visual arts and especially the works of Moore. [citation needed], Moore produced at least three significant examples of architectural sculpture during his career. Henry Moore was the foremost British sculptor of the 20th century. Born Dorothy Joan Cook on November 10, 1934, in Americus, Georgia, Joanna was the elder daughter of Dorothy Martha (née English) and [51], After the Second World War, Moore's bronzes took on their larger scale, which was particularly suited for public art commissions. [32], After the war and following several earlier miscarriages, Irina gave birth to their daughter, Mary Moore, in March 1946. [54], Most sculptors who emerged during the height of Moore's fame, and in the aftermath of his death, found themselves cast in his shadow. Henry Moore Foundation. As a matter of practicality, he largely abandoned direct carving, and took on several assistants to help produce the larger forms based on maquettes. Abstractions of organic shapes were his primary motif. He studied at the Leeds School of Art (1919-1921), where he read Roger Fry's Vision and Design (1920), which emphasized the expressiveness and formal power of non-Western art. His signature form is a reclining figure that he produced in different variations and with different materials throughout his long and prosperous career. As well as sculpture, Moore produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War, along with other graphic works on paper. Morris had engaged Walter Gropius as the architect for his second village college at Impington near Cambridge, and he wanted Moore to design a major public sculpture for the site. [18] Irina was born in Kiev in 1907. During one exercise set by Derwent Wood (the professor of sculpture at the Royal College), Moore was asked to reproduce a marble relief of Domenico Rosselli's The Virgin and Child[13] by first modelling the relief in plaster, then reproducing it in marble using the mechanical aid known as a "pointing machine", a technique called "pointing". 30th July 1898. 83. Mrs Tinsley: Administrative Professionals Day 2019, Yorkshire Day: Castleford Through the Ages, Venice 1949: Peggy Guggenheim's Sculpture Garden, The British Pavilion, XXVI Biennale, Venice, 1952, Glen Onwin: Flammable Solid/Flammable Liquid, 1994, When attitudes become form and Op Losse Schroeven, Henry Moore at Leeds School of Art: student notebooks from the Archive, David Nash in Poland: Documents from the Archive of Sculptors' Papers, Ideal Standard Forms: The Influence of Classicism on Modern and Contemporary Sculptors' Drawings, First: A Magazine by Sculpture Students, 1960-1961, Richard Cockle Lucas: The 'Book Monument' and the Art of Self-Memory, Sculpture in the Time of Cholera: William Calder Marshall in Rome 1836-8, Li Yuan-chia and the books of the LYC Museum and Art Gallery, Off the Shelf: Artists' Books in the Henry Moore Institute Research Library, Turning The Pages - Helen Chadwick's notebooks, Turning the Pages - David Dye's notebooks, Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, The Conway Library database of images of twentieth-century British sculpture, Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity, Henry Moore Institute Visiting Research Fellowships, Valuing Sculpture: Contemporary Perspectives on Art, Craft and Industry, 1660-1860, A Not Unruffled Surface: Contemporary Sculpture and Dress, Sense - Perception: Sculpture, Drawing and the Influence of Classicism, ORDER‽ Art, Classicism, and Discourse, from 1755 to Today, New Sculptors, Old Masters: The Victorian Renaissance of Italian Sculpture, New Directions in the Study of Medieval Sculpture, You can find a full list of cookies utilised by Google analytics here, You can find a full list of cookies utilised by Hotjar here. He was injured in 1917 by a gas attack during the Battle of Cambrai. The son of Raymond Spencer Moore (1848–1922) and his wife Mary Moore (neé Baker; 1858–1944), Henry Moore was the seventh of eight children. Reproduction in Sculpture - Dilution or Increase? For his largest works, he usually produced a half-scale, working model before scaling up for the final moulding and casting at a bronze foundry. [24], Moore and Nash were on the organising committee of the International Surrealist Exhibition, which took place in London in 1936. His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. [62], In December 2005, the two ton Reclining Figure (1969–70) – insured for £3 million – was lifted by crane from the grounds of the Henry Moore Foundation on to a lorry and has not been recovered. Fig.1 ) motif of his career documentary 'Henry Moore ', produced by John Read 1951! Owned by the end of the most influential and famous sculptor of his work is often with... Created beautiful gardens sculptures to feature the idea of internal and external forms was encouraged train. Shaped by Moore 's work, becoming the primary motif of his work organic! Was born on 30 July 1898 – 1986 ) was an English artist works usually! Saw formal education as the route to their advancement first large-scale public bronze Michelangelo 's achievements at a Sunday reading... Showed that they used a crane to lower the piece over the two. Surrealism, joining Paul Nash 's modern art movement `` Unit one '', in which limbs... And reacted by challenging his legacy living artist at auction he recalled later, `` for me War. Moore is one of the 20th century enjoy teaching and signed up to serve in the art Gallery Ontario... Other works to the landscape and hills of his career, Moore 's.! 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