Henry Spencer Moore (British, 1898-1986)

Sculptor Henry Moore (1898-1986) blended the abstract interests of both ancient and modern sculpture into a plethora of forms that hover between representational figuration and non-objective autonomy. In his frequent treatments of the human, especially the female form, Moore’s work flirts with the translation of that form into a kind of landscape. Having served in the army since 1917, Moore embarked on the 1920s as an art student at an art course at the Leeds School of Art, then the Royal College of Art where he took great interest in African, Oceanic and Pre-Columbian Art at the British Museum. Throughout his career, Moore was intensely invested in a modernist ‘truth to materials,’ often insisting on direct carving in wood or stone even as his works grew in complexity and scale. Only in the 1930s did Moore begin to explore the possibility of casting in bronze or lead based on his smaller terracotta or plaster originals. The work of Henry Moore is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Centre Pompidou and most lavishly at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, among many others.

photo: © The Henry Moore Foundation 2015