The Life of Henry Moore

Henry Moore’s rise from Yorkshire miner’s son to international acclaim as the twentieth century’s greatest sculptor is one of the most remarkable stories in British art. In this revised, updated, expanded and redesigned new edition of The Life of Henry Moore, Roger Berthoud charts Moore’s transition from controversial young modernist to pillar of the art-world establishment, garlanded with domestic and foreign honours. His account is enriched by the weekly interviews he did with Moore -- and his wife Irina -- before the sculptor’s death in 1986, aged eighty-eight.

At home and abroad Moore’s sculptures aroused strong passions and were often the object of abuse, sharp criticism and even physical assault, as well as of admiration. He was attacked by younger artists, among others, who saw his growing fame as an obstacle to their advancement. He was to survive the ebb and flow in his reputation, and emerge with the status of a contemporary old master.

From a mass of material, including recently discovered early letters, and interviews with Moore’s friends, his former assistants and students, dealers, collectors, museum officials and leading architects with whom he worked, Roger Berthoud has built up a lively and engaging though not uncritical picture of Moore’s long life and career in this definitive biography.

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Artists Biography

(b Castleford, W. Yorks, 30 July 1898; d Perry Green, Much Hadham, Herts, 31 Aug 1986). English sculptor, draughtsman and printmaker. Generally acknowledged as the most important British sculptor of the 20th century, he took the human figure as his central subject-matter throughout his career. Although he witnessed revolutionary stylistic changes and the emergence of new sculptural materials during his working life, he borrowed from diverse cultural traditions and artists in order to give his work a profound resonance with the art of the past. His female figures, echoing the forms of mountains, valleys, cliffs and caves, extended and enriched the landscape tradition, which he embraced as part of his English artistic heritage.

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