Born 1898, Castleford, Yorkshire.  Died 1986

Henry Moore studied at Leeds School of Art from 1919-21 and then at the Royal College of Art from 1921-24. A travelling scholarship took him to France and Italy in 1925 and then he taught first at the Royal College of Art in London until 1932 and then at Chelsea School of Art until 1939.

His first solo exhibition in London was at the Warren Gallery in 1928 and was followed by his first public commission for a relief on the London Underground Building. He was part of a group of artists and sculptors who looked to developments on the European mainland in the 1930s and was a member of the Seven and Five Society, Unit One and exhibited in the Abstract and Concrete exhibition in 1936 with artists such as Mondrian, Moholy-Nagy, Helion, Leger, Miro, Gabo and Calder. Moore was concerned not to surrender to complete abstraction and retain 'the psychological human element'. His work was also included in the International Surrealist exhibitions of 1936 and 1938.

During World War II, Moore was an official war artist and made numerous drawings of working miners and of people sheltering in the London Underground. After the war, Moore received many public commissions and had major solo exhibitions including his first retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1946. Succeeding retrospectives include one which reconsidered the early work in particular at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1983 and a posthumous retrospective at the Royal Academy in London in 1988.

He was awarded the Companion of Honour in 1955 and the Order of Merit in 1963. He spent the latter end of his life in Much Hadham in Hertfordshire - his house and grounds are now the home of the Henry Moore Foundation and may be visited by appointment.

Sculptural Objects