Henry Moore Complete Drawings 1916–86: Volume 6: Complete Drawings 1982–83

Volume 6 of the complete catalogue of Henry Moore’s drawings records 732 drawings produced in 1982 and 1983. Moore’s intensive drawing activity in the years 1982 and 1983 was related to the fact that ailing health prevented him from creating new sculpture. Although he continued to draw until his death in 1986, the drawings which appear in this volume represent the last fully active period of the artist’s life. In these drawings he revisited many of the themes that had preoccupied him throughout his career: reclining figures, his own hands, trees, studies after works of art in his collection, mothers with children, domestic subjects such as a woman reading. Ever inventive, he produced a new effect by holding charcoal sketches under running water so that the charcoal was dispersed over the entire page; after drying them between blotting paper, he applied watercolour washes of different colours which merged with each other on the still damp page, resulting in some delicate Turneresque seascapes and skyscapes. Moore’s lifelong interest in Nature and above all in the human figure dominates his drawings. He would often remark, ‘People think that they look but they don’t really, you know’. Throughout his working life, Moore never ceased in his endeavours to teach people how to look, how to see, how to appreciate what he himself called ‘the wonderful world of Nature’. This volume includes a preface and an explanation of how to use the book, an introduction by the Editor, detailed catalogue entries of each work with a black and white illustration, plus 16 pages of colour plates. The catalogue of drawings completes the published recording of Moore’s work and provides an essential reference tool for museums, galleries, collectors and students of twentieth-century art.