Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery looking at the air raid shelter drawings of Henry Moore and how they influenced his later work. I love this sort of small exhibition which not only shows beautiful work but also weaves an interesting argument around them. There was a lovely selection of shelter drawings. I hadn’t realised before that he just sketched and made notes in the shelters out of respect for the people. He worked them up into finished drawings later. I also hadn’t realised that his studio was bombed leaving him unable to make large sculptures during the war so he turned to drawing. The show concluded by looking at two post-war sculptural pieces which were visually influenced by the drawings and included a marquette for the relief wall of the Bouwcentrum in Rotterdam which I hadn’t come across before. Closed 22 September 2024 Review Evening Standard    

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 t...