Sculpture - Escultura: Henry Moore - 1940-49 - Part 1 - Drawing - Dibujos - Links

Posted by Ricardo Marcenaro | Posted in | Posted on 16:11


Open your mind, your heart to other cultures
Abra su mente, su corazón a otras culturas
You will be a better person
Usted será una mejor persona
RM

Two Seated Figures  1940

Watercolour, gouache and drawing on paper
support: 181 x 270 mm frame: 399 x 491 x 15 mm
on paper, unique
 


Two Seated Women  1940

Drawing and tempera on paper
support: 181 x 270 mm
on paper, unique


 
Standing Figures  1940

Wax, coloured pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
support: 264 x 181 mm frame: 490 x 400 x 17 mm
on paper, unique

Purchased 1940

This drawing by Moore can be closely associated with his sculptures of the period. Typically, the forms suggest at once human bodies, shells and bones, and interior bodily shapes. For Moore, drawing was a kind of investigative process, which would throw up new ideas for sculpture. Instead of producing a single, resolved image, the sculptor would generally cover the paper with different, half-finished sketches.

 
Grey Tube Shelter  1940

Watercolour, gouache and drawing on paper
support: 279 x 381 mm
on paper, unique

Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946

One evening in autumn 1940, Moore took cover from an air raid in Belsize Park underground station. Looking around at the people sheltering there, he became 'fascinated by the sight of people camping out deep under ground'. On returning to his studio he made some drawings from memory. When Kenneth Clark, chairman of the War Artists Advisory Committee, saw the pictures he commissioned further drawings and appointed Moore as an official war artist.

 
Woman Seated in the Underground  1941

Gouache, pen and ink, ink wash, watercolour and crayon on paper
support: 483 x 381 mm frame: 750 x 642 x 26 mm
on paper, unique

Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946

Although many of the Shelter Drawings showed groups of people, some concentrated on individuals. In this picture a lone woman sits apart from the other shelterers. Swathed in layers of clothing, she stares out of the picture, anxiously clasping her hands. This sense of tension is heightened by the abrupt jump from foreground to background and the network of nervous, scratchy lines that describe the figure.

The apparent absence of period detail led some commentators to interpret such figures as timeless symbols of fear, vulnerability and endurance.

 
A Tilbury Shelter Scene  1941

Pen, watercolour, crayon, and gouache on paper
support: 419 x 381 mm
on paper, unique

Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946

During the winter of 1940-1 Moore, in his capacity as a war artist, was given access to London's public shelters. Though he concentrated on underground stations, he did make drawings of other shelters, including a vast area in the basement of a warehouse in Tilbury where he noted 'Figures lying against platform with great bales of paper above also making beds¿ Dramatic, dismal lit, masses of reclining figures fading to perspective point - Scribbles and scratches, chaotic foreground¿ Dark wet settings'.


 
Tube Shelter Perspective  1941

Pencil, ink, wax and watercolour on paper
support: 483 x 438 mm frame: 750 x 695 x 25 mm
on paper, unique

Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946

This picture was exhibited at the National Gallery in 1941. It was described in the catalogue as 'a terrifying vista of recumbent shapes, pale as all underground life tends to be pale; regimented, as only fear can regiment; helpless yet tense, safe yet listening, uncouth, uprooted, waiting in the tunnel for the dawn to release them. This is not the descriptive journalism of art. It is imaginative poetry of a high order.'
 


Shelter Scene: Bunks and Sleepers  1941

Watercolour, gouache and drawing on paper
support: 483 x 432 mm frame: 750 x 690 x 28 mm
on paper, unique

Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946

This picture was exhibited at an exhibition called War Pictures at the National Gallery in 1941. It was also reproduced in the exhibition catalogue. In his catalogue essay, the critic Eric Newton compared the war between Germany and Britain to 'the fundamental opposition between the sea's restless power and the land's opposing firmness'. The wave-like undulations of the figures lying in the foreground of the drawing and the vertical cliff of figures on the bunks correspond remarkably with Newton's analogy.

 

Shelterers in the Tube  1941

Pencil, pen and ink, watercolour and crayon on paper
support: 380 x 568 mm frame: 650 x 817 x 35 mm
on paper, unique

Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946
 

Pink and Green Sleepers  1941

Pencil, ink, gouache and wax on paper
support: 381 x 559 mm frame: 650 x 815 x 36 mm
on paper, unique

Presented by the War Artists Advisory Committee 1946

One critic, writing in 1943, described the Shelter Drawings in terms of natural phenomena. He compared the strange colours, scratchy lines and pitted surfaces to 'lichen of grey rock, the coloured texture of weather-worn stone, the fiery black and red of igneous formations of burning coal'

Such associations between Moore's shelterers and nature supported a general propaganda message that within the British people lived an indomitable, almost elemental force which would prevail whatever the threat.
 


Maquette for Madonna and Child  1943

Bronze
object: 140 x 76 x 76 mm
sculpture

Purchased 1945

The mother and child had been a major theme in Moore's work since the 1920s. Yet when the vicar of the Church of St Matthew, Northampton, invited Moore to make a sculpture of the Madonna and Child for the church, he was reluctant to accept. He felt unsure how to adapt his secular interests to the Christian tradition.

These bronzes are casts of the original terracotta models he made for the project. They are unusually naturalistic and steeped in references to religious art of the Renaissance. This suggests Moore was trying to produce a sculpture that people would find both modern and familiar.






Sculpture - Escultura: Henry Moore - 1940-49 - Part 1 - Drawing - Dibujos - Links






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