Henry Moore

Henry Moore (1898-1986), British sculptor, draughtsman, and printmaker known principally for his large, semi-abstract sculptures of the human figure. He is considered the most prominent British sculptor of the 20th century, and his work had a strong influence on contemporary figural sculpture.

Moore was born in Castleford, Yorkshire, on July 30, 1898. He served briefly in the army and, from 1919 to 1921, he studied at the Leeds School of Art; from 1921 to 1925 he attended the Royal College of Art in London. During these years, Moore took a profound interest in the sculptural traditions of Africa, Oceania, and pre-Columbian America, as well as in the Palaeolithic, Sumerian, Egyptian, and ancient Greek sculpture that he saw in the British Museum; this interest was somewhat at odds with the academic coursework demanded by the Royal College of Art. His early works, executed in the 1920s, show the influences of pre-Columbian art, the massive figures of the Italian Renaissance artists Masaccio and Michelangelo, and the streamlined shapes of Constantin Brancusi. In the 1930s, the works of Pablo Picasso and of contemporary abstract artists were strong influences; many of Moore’s works of that period are highly abstract, consisting of simplified, rounded pieces carved from wood, with numerous indentations and holes often spanned with veils of thin metal wires. The most important and lasting influence on Moore’s work, however, was the world of nature. “The human figure,” he later wrote, “is what interests me most deeply, but I have found principles of form and rhythm from the study of natural objects, such as pebbles, rocks, bones, trees, plants.” In his mature works, beginning with Reclining Figure (1936, City Art Gallery, Wakefield, Yorkshire), Moore employed swelling shapes, undulating extensions, and rounded indentations that mirror natural forms.

In 1933, Moore joined Unit One, a newly formed group of avant-garde sculptors, architects, and painters, and in 1940 was appointed Official War Artist. During World War II, the inhabitants of towns and cities throughout Britain lived under the constant threat, and often the reality, of aerial bombing; from these years date his series of chalk and gouache drawings of the sleeping or reclining figures of people taking overnight refuge on the platforms of the London Underground; their draped forms, as in Two Sleepers (1941, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Sussex), conveying a sense of vulnerability in the cavernous obscurity of the Underground.

After his studio was bombed in 1940, Moore moved to Perry Green, Much Hadham, a village in Hertfordshire. Six years later, his daughter, Mary, was born, and themes of the mother and child and family groups became prominent in his work . The mother and child and the reclining figure remained constant themes in his work, whether he worked in wood, stone, or—after 1950—bronze, and later marble. These works range from the realistic—such as Draped Reclining Figure (1953, Time-Life Building, London), a massive sculpture of a woman reclining on her elbows—to the abstract—such as Internal and External Forms (1954, Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York State), a large, rounded bronze sculpture pierced by a hollow interior containing a second abstract metal form.

In the final years of his life, Moore devoted himself to drawing and printmaking. He died at Much Hadham on August 31, 1986. Several institutions devoted to his work have been established: the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada, which opened in 1974; the Henry Moore Foundation at Much Hadham (1977); the Henry Moore Sculpture Gallery and Centre for the Study of Sculpture, an extension to Leeds City Art Gallery (1982); and the Henry Moore Sculpture Trust, in Leeds (1988).