Daily Crack - Henry Moore, Art Gallery of Ontario and NY Botanical Gardens
When I was young my parents used to send me to a summer camp 3 hours north of Toronto in a town called Haliburton. As a result of this affiliation I had lots of Canadian friends growing up and some of those friendships continued into adulthood. For some reason I always liked Canadians and I loved Toronto and it was during one of these trips that I got my first real taste of Henry Moore. Of course I had studied Moore’s sculptures in art classes and art history, but seeing so many of them and having the sculptures right in front of you is much different than looking at a picture in a book. His work truly moved me.
The Art Gallery of Ontario houses the largest collection of Henry Moore sculptures in the world with more than 900 of his sculptures and drawings as well as objects that Moore used as inspiration in his sculpture. It was there that my love affair with Moore began on a deeper level. His sculptures transfixed me with their shape and form and all those angles and curves.
Henry Moore was the seventh of eight children. His father was a mining engineer and although the family struggled at times with poverty, education, music, and literature were very important in his family. His father did not want his son to grow up to be a laborer. Moore displayed an unusual ability for art at an early age, earning him a scholarship to the “Castleford Secondary School.” It was during his studies there that Moore made the decision to become an artist. Serving in WW1 Moore got a grant after the war to continue his education and attended “Leeds College of Art and Design,” where he studied sculpture.
His early sculptures were of a romantic Victorian style including landscapes, modeling animals, and natural forms. He went on to study primitivism, which affected not only what he was sculpting but his approach as well. Winning a six-month traveling scholarship Moore went to Northern Italy and there he studied the masters like Michaelangelo and Pisano. During this time Moore visited Paris to take some classes. On one of those visits to Paris he went to the Louvre, where he viewed a plaster cast of a Toltec-Maya figure. It’s said that this had a profound effect on him and his work, and that much of his work after seeing this cast was derived from that place.
Teaching at the Royal College of Art and later heading the sculpture department at the Chelsea School of Art, Moore would make frequent trips to Paris where he was in contact with and influenced by the surrealist movement and the likes of Pablo Picasso, George Braque, Jean Arp and others. Moore continued to teach until the outbreak of WW11.
Henry Moore was a lucky man. He was married to a woman named Irina Radetsky, and supposedly had a very happy marriage. And in 1946 Irina after multiple miscarriages, gave birth to their long awaited daughter, Mary. He was a very successful artist and got to live and see his art appreciated by the world. His art also made him a very wealthy man with many large commissions, including the 1950’s sculpture of a reclining woman for the UNESCO building in Paris.
As his wealth and fame grew Moore stayed grounded and decided to continue to live in his original house, a farmhouse they called “Hoglands,” in Hertfordshire, saying it was big enough. Before his death he established the Henry Moore Foundation where today his legacy is carried out. The foundation is dedicated to preserving the works of Henry Moore, promoting public appreciation of art, and providing grants for arts education. And something you might not know about Henry Moore? In 1951 he was offered Knighthood but turned it down. He was afraid that people might perceive him as too establishment.
For those of you who live in the NY area, we are in the last two weeks of a special Henry Moore exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens. You have through November 2nd to get there if you’re interested. It’s supposed to be the largest outdoor exhibit of the artists work.
To learn more about the Henry Moore Foundation either click on the link below or cut and paste it into your browser.
http://www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk/
To get information about the Henry Moore NY Botanical Garden exhibit, either click on the link below or cut and paste it into your browser.
http://www.nybg.org/henry_moore/