Henry Moore: sculpture, drawings, etchings, tapestries

After 43 years Henry Moore returns to the Giorgio Cini Foundation: as always, a master

The first international conference held at the Giorgio Cini Foundation
was organised by Unesco on the artist’s role in contemporary society
(‘L’artiste dans la société contemporaine’, 22-28 September 1952).
Among the speakers was Henry Moore, winner of the international prize
for sculpture at the Biennale in 1948. Moore’s clear and unwavering
voice defended the freedom and dignity of art and the artist against
any form of politically-imposed ideology. He reaffirmed the humanistic
stance he had taken a year earlier in an interview with Berto Lardera
in London, in which he had stressed the highly personal and spiritual
nature of art, insisting that any productive force which chose to
ignore this fundamental idea denied the very essence of art. In
commenting further on his own oeuvre, he declared himself best able to
express his feelings and aspirations in concrete materials such as
wood, stone and metal. Today, forty-three years after Henry Moore spoke
of his civic, moral and aesthetic commitment – and fifty years after
the end of the horrific cataclysm of which he left dramatic testimony
in his drawings of the London air-raid shelters – the exhibition at San
Giorgio presents the very ‘concrete’ expression Moore achieved in his
sixty-year commitment as a sculptor, painter, draughtsman and tapestry
maker.
This exposition on one of the most important artists of our time, whose
juxtaposition of form and space revives an age-long humanistic
tradition, has been made possible by the support and generosity of the
Henry Moore Foundation, the British Council and the Art Council of
Great Britain. It is part of the centennial of the Venice Biennale,
with which the Foundation has always maintained a warm collaboration
and which, less than fifty years ago, proclaimed Moore one of the most
important artists of the 20th century.
We would like to dedicate this effort to the memory of Bruno Visentini,
who served as the Foundation’s president from 1977 until his death (13
February, 1995), and who sustained the Foundation’s expositive
programme through numerous memorable shows. More than just homage, the
exhibition is a tribute offered in open and due recognition.

Venice, Island of San Giorgio Maggiore
26 August – 26 November 1995

Information
Institute of Art History
Island of San Giorgio Maggiore – 30124 Venezia
tel. +39 041 2710230
fax +39 041 5205842
e-mail: arte@cini.it