Happy Birthday Henry Moore A Giant Of 20th Century Art

Happy Birthday Henry Moore! One of the giants of 20th century art. Moore was born to a mining family in West Yorkshire, England in 1898. He died in East Hertfordshire, England in 1986. His public commissions occupy university campuses, pastoral expanses and major urban centers in 38 countries around the world. His sculpture and drawings have been the subject of many museum exhibitions and retrospectives, including the Tate Gallery, London (1951); Whitechapel Gallery, London (1957); Tate Gallery, London (1968); Forte di Belvedere, Florence (1972); Tate Gallery and the Serpentine Gallery, London for the occasion of Moore’s eightieth birthday (1978); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1983); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (1987); Royal Academy of Arts (1988); Shanghai Art Museum (2001); Henry Moore, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (2001); CaixaForum, Barcelona, (2008); Kunsthal, Rotterdam (2006, travelled to Didrichsen Museum, Helsinki in 2008); Kew Botanical Gardens, London (2007-8); Tate Britain (2010); Kremlin Museum, Moscow (2012).

The Henry Moore Foundation was founded by Moore in 1977 to increase public enjoyment of the arts, especially sculpture. It has opened his restored Hertfordshire home, studios and sculpture grounds to the public, tours the world’s largest collection of his work, and runs sculpture exhibitions and research at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. It also supports sculpture through an active grants programme. The Foundation has launched Henry Moore Friends, an opportunity to help promote the artist’s legacy.

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park is currently showing a fresh perspective of the work of the British sculptor Henry Moore in 2015. This major new exhibition displays more than 120 works considering the artist’s profound relationship with land, something which was fundamental to his practice and fuelled his visual vocabulary. Born into a mining family in Castleford, West Yorkshire, Moore was a founding patron of YSP. The exhibition is taking place 7 March–6 September 2015 at the Underground Gallery and open air “The mystery of what is under the shroud is somewhat akin to the mystery in poetry. It is this element of the unknown that fascinates me in caves and the holes in the sides of hills – you don’t know what is there until you look and explore into them. This mystery excites the imagination and poetry has the same multi-meaning that makes you explore it in depth.” Henry Moore, 1974 In 2015, Yorkshire Sculpture Park (YSP) offers a fresh perspective to the work of Henry Moore (1898–1986) in a major exhibition of more than 120 works considering the artist’s profound relationship with land, something which was fundamental to his practice and fuelled his visual vocabulary. 

Back to a Land is produced in partnership with The Henry Moore Foundation. Henry Moore: Back to a Land explores the artist’s radical notion of placing sculpture in the landscape, something which forever changed British sculpture. Moore was committed to showing his work in the open air and in the rolling hills of YSP’s former Deer Park in particular. Here, it can be experienced with the resident flock of sheep, an animal described by the artist as an ideal foil for the appreciation of his work.

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