Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore (1898–1986) was one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. This catalogue considers Moore’s celebrated Shelter drawings as the point of departure for a new reading of the artist’s fascination with images of walls, during and immediately after World War II. It accompanies a focused exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery. After the destruction of his London studio early in World War II, Henry Moore began drawing figures sheltering from bomb raids in the London Underground. This catalogue and exhibition consider Moore’s celebrated series as the point of departure for a new reading of the artist’s fascination with images of walls, during and immediately after World War II. In the London Underground, where Moore drew these figures, the walls of these sheltered spaces came to absorb his attention in an altogether new way, becoming scene-setters, and key components of his drawings. This fascination with the bricks and the presence of walls, their texture, mass and volume, became especially important after his project to illustrate the wartime radio play The Rescue, based on Homer’s Odyssey. Henry Moore: Shadows on the Wall, a collaboration with the Henry Moore Foundation, suggests for the first time that the walls in his drawings offer a new way to understand some of his most individual and monumental Post-War sculpture projects.