FAIRFIELD TO UNVEIL HENRY MOORE'S “SHELTER DRAWINGS?

Thursday, 18 January 2007 08:28

STURGEON BAY, WI – On Thursday, February 1, the Fairfield Center for Contemporary Art in downtown Sturgeon Bay will open its newest exhibition on view until 25 March.  This exhibition will feature the work of celebrated British sculptor Henry Moore, whose graphic works comprise the core of the Fairfield’s permanent collection.  The exhibit, titled “Henry Moore 1940-1942: Shelter Drawings,” will incorporate the artist’s series of facsimile collotypes executed during the war years of 1940-1942.  These exceptional works have rarely been available to the public.

The son of an English coal miner, Moore was born in Castleford, Yorkshire, in 1898 and served in the Civil Service Rifles regiment during World War I.  His first visit to the British Museum in 1917, during his World War I service, ignited a passion that ultimately led to a Royal College of Art scholarship in 1921.  Following trips to Paris and central and northern Italy in the early 1920s, Moore taught at the RCA and began to study bones at the Natural History Museum and English stone and the Geological Museum.

Form fascinated Moore – he completed his first transformation drawings, based on analogies between human figures and natural forms, in 1926.  He began carving; however, by the end of the 1920s, modeling and casting began to surpass direct carving.  He also began drawing.

During World War II, Moore commuted from his cottage in Kent to teach at the Chelsea School of Art in London; he resigned when the school was evacuated.  At that time, he began making his first drawings of people sheltering in the London Underground during the Blitz.  The “Shelter Drawings” exhibition is a showcase of these striking, memorable works.