Henry Moore. The Sculptor’s drawing

With Henry Moore. The sculptor’s drawing the Museo Novecento is positioned internationally and does so with an exhibition prepared in the last two years by the director of the Florentine institution in collaboration with the scientific direction of the Moore Foundation. The natural forms – rocks, pebbles, roots and trunks -, the animals, but also the skulls and then the relationship between the creator and the material, also exemplified by the drawings that portray the hands of the artist or the artist at work in the landscape , become the focus of the exhibition.

Taking its cue from a reinterpretation of some central themes in Moore’s production, the exhibition intends to offer an in-depth study on the value of drawing in his almost daily practice and on its relationship with sculpture. According to Moore: “The observation of nature is decisive in the life of an artist. Thanks to nature, the sculptor too, enriches his knowledge of form, finds nutriment for inspiration, and maintains a freshness of vision, avoiding becoming crystallized in the repetition of formulas”.

Henry Moore. The sculptor’s drawing emphasizes the graphic production of this protagonist of contemporary sculpture, who has assimilated the lesson of primitivist and extra-European sculpture, that of the historical avant-gardes and above all the great Italian tradition of Renaissance masters active in Florence and Tuscany.

“The main purpose of my drawings is to help me sculpt. Drawing is in fact a means to generate ideas for the sculpture, to pull out from myself the initial idea, to organise the ideas and attempt to develop them … I use drawing also as a method of study and observation of nature (nude studies, studies of shells, bones, and other things). I also happen at times to draw for the pure pleasure of doing so”, Moore said.

The choice of themes is dictated by the desire to “dig” in an area of Henry Moore’s work so far little investigated and less known to the general Italian public, whose knowledge is mainly linked to the sculptures representing recumbent figures and the drawings of the Second World War. Connected by a common study on the principles of rhythm, structure, and form, the subjects exhibited make it possible to reread Moore’s production, revealing important references to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, between Romantic landscape painting (the reference is, in particular, to the drawings dedicated to atmospheric events, to William Turner, for example) and the more typically scientific observation (take, for instance, the drawings dedicated to animals typical of a certain Anglo-Saxon culture).

A new humanism in the art that Moore was aware of: “I disapprove of the idea according to which contemporary art is an act of escape from reality. […] It is precisely through art that it is possible to delve even more deeply into life itself. Art is not a sedative or a drug, nor a simple exercise of good taste; nor is it an embellishment of reality with pleasant combinations of forms and colours; it is instead an expression of the meaning of life and an exhortation to commit oneself through even greater efforts”.

These are Moore’s words, which are valid as viaticum to this exhibition and perhaps also to those who still want to find in art a tool to improve their relationship with reality, others, and the nature that surrounds us.