The human figure provided Henry Moore (1898–1986) with endless inspiration. Depicted standing, reclining, in pairs, or isolated, male and female figures dominate the sculptor’s work and served as the basis for his formal explorations. We are pleased to celebrate this innovative modern artist by featuring two fine works: Two Three-Quarter Figures on Base, 1984, and Head, 1984.
As we can see in his gracefully rendered Head, Moore found particular interest in the human head. Although the heads of many of his reclining figures often appear small, even insignificant, especially compared to their monumental bodies, Moore remarked that “for me the head is the most important part of a piece of sculpture...it gives to the rest a scale, it gives to the rest a certain human poise, and meaning.”
Isolated, radically simplified heads and profiles appear throughout Moore's work. As he once explained: "You don’t need to represent the features of a face so as to suggest the human qualities special to a particular person….When you observe a friend in the distance, you don’t recognize him by the color of his eyes…but by the effect made by his figure—the general disposition of his forms, the proportion and set of one mass to another.”
The play of smooth, flattened surfaces against textured areas in Head is characteristic of Moore’s late work, while its perfectly symmetrical face contrasting with its varied textures and volumes reflects the sophisticated asymmetry that lay at the heart of his approach to all of his art.
Two Three-Quarter Figures on Base exemplifies Moore’s renewed interest in totemic, vertical forms. Here he has perched two figures on a textured base cast from cork (a rare material in the artist’s oeuvre), with the sinuous lines of their bodies resolving into sloping shoulders, delicate waists, and swan-like necks. Through his mastery of bronze, Moore managed to impart a sense of movement to the figures and create a feeling of psychological resonance between them.
"I think the humanist organic element will always be for me of fundamental importance in sculpture, giving sculpture its vitality..."
–Henry Moore
Henry Moore, 1950
Photo: Irving Penn
Moore was born in Castleford, a small mining town in Yorkshire, in 1898. After training to be a teacher and serving in the British Army he studied at Leeds School of Art and then the Royal College of Art, London.
By the 1950s Moore had begun to receive a number of international commissions. He continued working in sculpture, drawing, printmaking and textile design until his death in 1986.
Moore was a pioneer, and the first British artist to become a global star in his own lifetime. His work came to symbolise post-war modernism and can be said to have caused a British sculptural renaissance.
Source: Henry Moore Foundation