Henry Moore's Sheep Sketchbook

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During this time, he co-founded the Seven and Five Society with Hepworth, her business partner Ben Nicholson, and several other abstract modernists. They went to Paris regularly to see works by Braque, Picasso, and Giacometti. Moore decided to abandon his relatively short involvement in Surrealism after his involvement as an event planner of the “London International Surrealist Art show” in 1936 and decided to return to his Modernist representational work in 1937. Geoffrey Grigson, Henry Moore, The Penguin Modern Painters (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Limited, 1943). Plate 20 shows a drawing, Objects – string and wood (1938), illustrating stringed figures in a prison-like setting. Moore was a Trustee of the National Gallery, London from 1955-74. In 1977 he formed the Henry Moore Foundation at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire. Wilkinson, AlanG. (2002). Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations. University of California Press. p.41. ISBN 0-520-23161-9.

copies of the deluxe edition numbered 1 to 15 and I to VII with CGM 196, 197, 199 to 201, 226 to 232 numbered 1/80 to 15/80 and I/XV to VII/XV, and CGM 198, 233 to 235 numbered 1/15 to 15/15 and I/VII to VII/VII Moore started sculpting in wood and clay, influenced by Michelangelo, at his institution in Castleford, where a few of his relatives had studied and where he had received a scholarship. He frequently borrowed ideas from things such as pebbles, shells, and bones, and the way he invoked them in his sculpture urged the observer to see the natural environment as one continuously different artwork, constantly generated by natural phenomena. Jelbert, Rebecca (2021). "Henry Moore's Wartime Drawings (1939–1942) and the Influence of Gustave Doré's Illustrations for Dante's 'Divine Comedy' ". Dante Studies. 139: 154–187. doi: 10.1353/das.2021.0005. S2CID 254221459. Henry Moore’s fascination with the countryside and wildlife has contributed to the notion that he has strong roots in British art traditions, but his gently hopeful, redemptive perspective of mankind has also won him international acclaim. Moore’s technique was founded on direct cutting, and he discarded the modeling phase.Moore’s interest in the figure continued throughout his career, and he produced a vast body of work that explored the human form in a variety of ways. His sculptures ranged from highly abstracted figures to more naturalistic depictions, and he was particularly interested in the way that the figure could convey a sense of energy and emotion. The Henry Moore Foundation, which today oversees his house as a museum and Gallery, was created at the end of that decade to encourage the preservation and exposure of his public works. Many awards were showered upon him, notably a knighthood (which he declined). The crossed feet and hands are abbreviations of the limbs, an extension of the contradictory, relaxed torsion in the body. The contours of the sculpture evoke, as Moore noted, the disparate and enigmatic contours of the landscape, opening up voids beneath the shoulders and under the arms, echoed in the arching of the legs. The sculpture can thus be seen in the round, each angle stimulates a new and perhaps surprising interpretation. In John Hedgecoe’s seminal book on the artist, Moore states, “from the very beginning the reclining figure has been my main theme.’₁ This subject is central to Moore’s creativity throughout his career. In his own words, “the reclining figure gives the most freedom, compositionally and spatially… A reclining figure can recline on any surface. It is free and stable at the same time. It fits in with my belief that sculpture should be permanent, should last for eternity.” ₂

Henry Moore is one of the most significant British artists of the 20 th Century and Osborne Samuel have held many exhibitions of the artist’s work over the years, curating both for museums and galleries globally and working closely with the Henry Moore Foundation. We have also published many catalogues and books on the artist’s life and work. After the Second World War, Moore's bronzes took on their larger scale, which was particularly suited for public art commissions. As a matter of practicality, he largely abandoned direct carving, and took on several assistants to help produce the larger forms based on maquettes. 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. These maquettes often began as small forms shaped by Moore's hands—a process that gives his work an organic feeling. They are from the body. Works by Moore are in the collections of institutions in 25 states and the District of Columbia. [81] Moore was born in a small coal-mining town near Leeds in the north of England. He was the seventh child of Raymond Spencer Moore, a Lincolnshire man of Irish ancestry, and his wife, Mary Baker, who came from Staffordshire, in the English Midlands. Moore’s father was a coal miner, a self-educated man, a socialist, and a trade unionist. Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.

Moore admired the ferocious commitment that direct cutting offered with materials like stone and wood. He stressed the need of the sculptor “getting the solid shape, as it were, into his mind – he connects himself with its gravitational center.” Moore’s art depicts mankind as a tremendous natural force by referencing both the natural environment and the human body at the same time. Moore thought that material has its own energy, “a strong life of its own,” and that it was his mission to show it.