Henry Moore and the Classic Canon of Modern Sculpture

The exhibition is organised by The Henry Moore Foundation and The Kremlin Museums in collaboration with the British Council.

The exhibition project incorporates about 60 sculptures, 20 original drawings and 3 tapestries from the Henry Moor Foundation collection, supplemented by key loans from both public and private collections. Placed in two exhibition halls of the Moscow Kremlin Museums the display is intended to be a retrospective of Moore's career, from his early carved artworks in stone, wood and marble, which betray the early influence of non-Western art on the artist, to experiments into biomorphic surrealism of the 1930s; and later investigations into constructivism. The highlight of the exhibition is the group of abstract and figurative sculptures from the 1980s, bronze models and maquettes for the major sculptural monuments - public works of art - which now stand in the main squares of world capitals, from London to Tel-Aviv and Toronto. His world famous "Family Group", created in 1948-1949 as a symbol of the world's recovery from the devastations of the war, stands in front of the exhibition hall at the Patriarch's Palace of the Moscow Kremlin.
The display is completed with a special collection of drawings, ranging from preliminary drawings and ideas for sculpture to heavily-worked compositions, as well as a selection of tapestries, intended to give a unique insight into the Moore's working methods.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue including essays on the work of Henry Moore by leading British scholars, newly commissioned texts from Dawn Ades, Chris Stephens, Jeremy Lewison, and Anita Feldman an interview with Mary Moore, the artist's daughter, as well as extracts from Henry Moore's writings and conversations on art.