Moore & Chadwick: A Radical Form

Henry Moore was born in Castleford, Yorkshire in 1898, one of eight children. His parents were Mary and Raymond, who was a coal miner. On leaving school in 1915, he first trained as a teacher and then enlisted in the army aged 19. At the end of the War he was awarded an exserviceman’s grant which he used to study at Leeds School of Art. Moore continued his studies at the Royal College of Art, London in 1921, before teaching there for many years and also meeting his to be wife Irina Radetsky. The couple lived in Hampstead for many years, but when their home was damaged by bombing in 1940 they moved to Perry Green in Hertfordshire, which is now the centre of the Henry Moore Foundation.

At the turn of the century there was a widespread sentiment that English art had become obsolete. The towering force of French Modernism was considered at the forefront of the avant-garde, with Paris at its centre. In 1931-32 Moore visited the French capital and met Alberto Giacometti, Ossip Zadkine, Jacques Lipchitz and Constantin Brancusi, but it was the surrealists, especially Jean Arp and Joan Miró, who had the most influence upon his work. Moore was inspired by the biomorphic forms (organic lines and shapes from nature) of the surrealists, merging this with abstraction to create his own wholly unique visual language.

Moore’s implementation of Surrealism is recurrent in his reclining figures, with the movement allowing him to explore the “humanist organic element” of sculpture. Many considered that the two competing movements of the period – Surrealism and Abstraction – could not be combined, but Moore did not accept this narrow view asserting, ‘all good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements’. On returning to London, Moore exhibited at the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition, alongside fellow Unit One members Paul Nash and Roland Penrose.

By the 1970s both Moore and Chadwick had created unique and instantaneously recognisable sculptural vocabularies. For Chadwick this was based around his distinct male and female figures: one with a triangular head (female) and the other rectangular (male). The figures are regularly seen cloaked, either sitting or standing. In a similar vein to Moore’s use of drapery, the billowing robes give dynamism and movement whether the subjects are walking or seated. Although Chadwick moved away from hand welding at this time, he still strove for a coarse tactile surface to his sculptures. To achieve this, in the casting process he used phosphoric acid to control the finish and stop the shiny patina of classical sculpture, which had been so popular previously.

Moore’s mature style was more closely rooted to a subtle abstraction of the figure, organic shapes and smooth surfaces. In his reclining figures Moore simplifies the lines of the body, integrating natural forms inspired by the undulating hills surrounding Perry Green. At the height of his artistic powers, and engaged with social reform, he was driven to create large-scale works for public spaces further cementing his reputation as the father of Modern British sculpture.