HENRY MOORE

until Sunday August 08 2010
Tate Britain
Millbank
SW1P 4RG London
Great Britain

Contact presse
Louise Butler
T : + 44 (0) 207 887 8732
louise.butler@tate.org.uk
www.tate.org.uk/britain/

Radical, experimental and avant-garde, Henry Moore (1898–1986) was one of Britain’s greatest artists. This stunning exhibition takes a fresh look at his work and legacy, presenting over 150 stone sculptures, wood carvings, bronzes and drawings.

Moore rebelled against his teachers’ traditional views of sculpture, instead taking inspiration from non-Western works he saw in museums. He pioneered carving directly from materials, evolving his signature abstract forms derived from the human body. This exhibition presents examples of the defining subjects of his work, such as the reclining figure, mother and child, abstract compositions and drawings of wartime London. The works are situated in the turbulent ebb and flow of twentieth-century history, sometimes uncovering a dark and erotically charged dimension that makes us look at them in a new light. The trauma of war, the advent of psychoanalysis, new ideas of sexuality, primitive art and surrealism all had an influence on Moore’s work.