Henry Moore: The Helmet Heads
Fascinating exhibition at the Wallace Collection showing the seven sculptures in Henry
Moore’s Helmet Head series and looking at how they were inspired by his visits
to the Wallace Collection.
This show was
cleverly set out to take you through the inspiration for this work and
preliminary ideas. It showed sketches of helmets by Moore in the Wallace
collections own collection alongside the actual objects then showed you how he
worked with the ideas these had inspired and how these developed into the
Helmet Heads. It
really made you look differently at the real helmets and armour which I’d
always found quite dry before.
It then looked at
the evolution of the Helmet Heads including small marquettes for them and full
sized plaster versions. I had never realised that the interior and exterior
where cast separately and I loved the fact that there were five interior
figures made which he matched with different exteriors in the first three
heads. The three surviving models for these were here. They reminded me of
Rodin’s series of dancers’ limbs which he put together in different formations
to create a series of figures.
The show then
ended with a complete set of the heads shown against a dark background and in a
maze formation so you could walk round them and look at the detail. It also
talked about other works by Moore developed from the helmets.
Closes on 23 June
2019
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