Organic Abstract Forms

Henry Spencer Moore was born on the 30th of July 1898 in the small coalmining town of Castleford, Yorkshire. He was the seventh of eight children.

Henry Moore Photo: Henry Moore with Reclining Figure, 1939 in his garden at Burcroft.

His career spanned long enough that he was active in two artistic movements in Europe and England during the 1900’s. His early work in the 1920’s would be influential in the Modernism movement. In reaction to the Romantic movement, artists pushed the traditional idea of beauty by showing their world in more abstract, stylized images.

Double Oval.

The War had a great impact in the Modernism movement during this time period, including Moore. He was commissioned by several "Nuclear Energy," a bronze sculpture by Henry Moore, commemorates the first sustained nuclear reaction, in 1941, in the squash courts under the west stands of Stagg Field. Stagg Field has been replaced by Regenstein Library.

Wood sculpture at the Met in NY.

His later worked we viewed as part of the Surrealist art movement popular in the 1930’s. Becoming more abstract and non-objective, the work turned to a more imaginative subject. Critics started to tear him down in the media, saying his work was harsh and ugly.

Henry Moore died at the age of eighty-eight on the 31st of August 1986 and the press, which had been so hard on him in his early years as a sculptor, now praised his great achievements. Since the death of Sir Winston Churchill, Henry Moore has been the most internationally acclaimed of Englishmen, honoured by every civilized country in the world, declared the Daily Telegraph (31 August 1986).

African Shona Sculpture

“stretching the body”