Henry Moore
Henry Moore’s sculptures are as beautiful to look at as they are fun to touch. Born in 1898 in Castleford, England, Moore served and was wounded in World War I. After the war, he earned a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, where he began to combine his influences from Egyptian and pre-Columbian art with the sculpture masters of Europe. At first, his work moved towards a formal abstraction of the human body. During World War II, at a time when the sculptor’s materials were in short supply, Moore produced a series of drawings of Londoners coming together in bomb shelters. These drawings informed his sculptural works after the war: the earlier abstract style became more grounded in celebrating the forms and shapes of the body. Perhaps his most well known sculptures are his reclining nudes: the shapes, carved directly without using clay models, are as prominent as the openings in the bodies' forms. The smoothness and accessibility of the works still invite all to run their hands along the sculpture's contours. His sculptures can be seen at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters, New York’s Lincoln Center, Washington’s National Gallery of Art, London’s Time-Life Building, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago, amongst other places and collections. The Art Gallery of Toronto hosts a gallery devoted solely to his works. Moore died in 1986.
