The British critic Herbert Read once famously described the group of avant-garde artists centred around Henry Moore in Hampstead in the 1930s as “a nest of gentle artists”. When world events demanded, however, Moore was quick to put his art at the service of harsher realities. This lecture will reveal and analyse an unfamiliar aspect of Moore’s oeuvre, from his response to the Spanish Civil War through his work as an official war artist during World War Two to his response to the Holocaust, the Cold War and the continued threat of atomic warfare in the 1960s.
In the series:
May 16: Life or Theatre? Charlotte Salomon
June 27: Not So Gentle? War and Conflict in the Work of Henry Moore
July 26: Surrealist Subjects or Surrealist Objects? The Position of Women in the Surrealist Movement