In Moore’s drawings – he seems to be working out the shape and structure for a sculpture. In the process two different things are happening, an outside shape and a more complicated inside shape. Through drawing he can workout his sculpture and work out and develop his ideas. I feel his shelter drawings also show this process. As he transformed the shapes of objects that inspired him into strange and beautiful shapes for his sculpture he also does this in t he bodies. The concentration on the human figure, prominent use of colour and a manifestly worked surface showing the process of creation express Moore’s sensibility and a neo-romantic quality. The exagerated distortion of the figure registers the common tragic experience of war; not as “arbitrar and inhuman distortion but as a communal expression of suffering” 19, Mitcheinson & Stallabrass.
Moore used the human figure to express and communicate “more completely one’s feelings about the world than in any other way”. His abstract sculptural language combined the human figure, particularly the female with organic forms such as shells pebbles and bones. His inspirations included nature and natural forms (“form as a three-dimensional reality…and the way light revealed form.” Henry Moore 1985), Greek myths and ancient Greek art, the native art of Latin America and Africa, modern art movements, war, his own childhood, and youth, and experience of family life and parenthood. Themes included Mother and child reclining figure and head. His anxieties and experiences of war (gas poisoning etc) fuelled his art. After the war the government gave out ex-servicemen grants – he went to Leeds college of art to sturdy to be a sculptor, a teacher was brought in specialy and Moore was his only student. Then studying at the Royal College. He stands as one of the world’s foremost modern sculptors. It “Time will show that Moore and Picasso have been the two greatest figures in modern art.” John Read, 1979. Influenced by European Modernism and Primitivism and identified with the English landscape. He often made quick studies, experimental forms e.g. visualizing human forms in the Cornish Landscape. Turning pebbles into heads e.g. “helmet heads”. (www.buserwirth.com/exhib)
Moore was also an accomplished drawer – as an almost parallel career. his Shelter drawings – not originally meant to be exhibitied – more personal visual notes, subjects for future drawing or sculptures…….have a personality of their own…..capturing the atmosphere, feeling of imprisonment…..disturbing…..anxiety. In 1953 Moore wrote, ‘there is a general idea that sculptors’ drawings should be diagrammatic studies, without any sense of background behind the object or of any atmosphere around it.
“Throughout his career, Moore utilised a wide range of techniques and media, such as line drawing and cross-hatching, gouache, chalk and crayon, to bring two-dimensional forms to life, creating impressions of movement and radiance and carving human forms from a sheet of paper in a similar fashion to the way in which he carved expressive forms from slabs of stone. With these works on paper, Moore was not drawing simply as an exercise. Instead, the artist was drawing for ‘the pleasure of looking more intently and intensely’, emphasising that these works on paper are not simply sketches, but instead illustrate important stages in Moore’s development as a draughtsman and sculptor.”http://www.hauserwirth.com/exhibitions/579/henry-moore-family-collection-br-works-on-paper-from-the-henry-moore-family-collection/view/
This drawing below uses was crayon, coloured crayon, pastel, felt tip pen and watercolour on paper – Gourd Women 1964.
Since researching Moore’s work I have become much more aware of expression and special awareness in my own work. I appreciate more the way he relates to the human figure which I tried to emulate in my life drawing and statue piece.
1) Henry Moore, Jeremy Wallis Creative Lies, Harcourt Ed, Oxford 2002
Sarah Grealis 503475 