Loughborough University: ‘Henry Moore in Miniature’ Exhibition Reveals Wartime Influence on the Sculptor’s Work

The English sculptor, active from the 1940s to the 1980s, was best known for his monumental bronze sculptures. This exhibition displays more than 60 of Moore’s maquettes – small models created to plan a larger piece of sculpture.

Later in his career, as Europe descended into yet another war, Moore completed Three Points (1939-1940), made from cast iron. The sculpture has surrealist characteristics and although Moore never saw himself as part of the surrealist movement, he was excited by its impact on contemporary art.

Moore said of this sculpture: “This pointing has an emotional or physical action in it where things are just about to touch but don’t … like the points in the sparking plug of a car … the spark has to jump across the gap.” However, for me, this sculpture has distinctly threatening connotations, emblematic of a time of high anxiety throughout Europe.

The start of the second world war left Moore questioning his role in the impending conflict. Sir Kenneth Clarke, then-director of the National Gallery (1934-1945) and a lifelong supporter of Moore, appointed him as a war artist. The sculptor was immediately drawn to the subterranean human landscape he had witnessed on the London Underground, where Londoners sheltered from the Blitz.

Moore made a point of never making direct observational drawings from those sleeping in the underground tunnels – but he did capture their plight in a series of memorable drawings completed when returning to his studio. It’s thought Moore made a series of maquettes as a way of recalling these intimate scenes of survival. His “Sleeping Shelterers” drawings may have been based on these maquettes.