Henry Moore

HENRY MOORE (United Kingdom, 1898 - 1986).
"Studies for Sculpture on Blue Grey Background".
Lithograph on Arches paper. Copy 13/60.
With damp stains and darkened paper.
Printed by Mourlot Freres, Paris.
Signed and justified in pencil.
Measurements: 43 x 35 cm; 62,5 x 50,5 cm (paper).
The lithograph presents six studies of reclining figures and groups of mother and child, recurring themes in Moore's work. Henry Moore trained at the Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London. Although during his early years he followed the Romantic style of the Victorian era, he gradually developed a language of his own, influenced by Italian Renaissance artists such as Giotto, Giovanni Pisano and Michelangelo, and also by the sculpture of the Toltec-Maya culture. His early works of the 1920s also show a certain influence of the aerodynamic forms of Constantin Brancusi. During the following decade his work would be influenced by Picasso and the avant-garde abstract artists, both in his drawings and sculptures. Thus, many of his works of this period approach abstraction, some of them being rounded pieces carved in wood, with numerous cuts and holes, often covered by veils of fine metal wire. However, Moore's main and most permanent influence came from the world of nature. In his mature period, beginning with "Reclining Figure" (1936, City Art Gallery, Wakefield), Moore would employ swollen, rounded, undulating forms, with hollows and rounded perforations reflecting natural forms. His favorite subjects, from this point on, include mothers with their children, family groups, fallen warriors and, above all, the reclining human figure, which he continued to depict throughout his career, whether worked in wood or stone or, from 1950, in bronze and marble. In 1955 he received the Order of the Companions of Honor, and the Order of Merit in 1963. He was also a member of the boards of the National Gallery in London and the Tate. Moore is currently represented in the most important museums around the world, such as the MoMA in New York, where a retrospective was dedicated to him in 1946; the Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, the National Gallery and the Tate in London, the Metropolitan in New York, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, etc.