Henry Spencer Moore (1898-1986) was a British artist famous for his semi-abstract bronze sculptures. Many of these are on a monumental scale and are displayed around the world as public art.

Moore was born in a small Yorkshire mining town. He wanted to become a sculptor, but his parents were opposed to the idea. So he trained as a teacher.

However, after serving in the Army during World War I, Moore got a scholarship which he used to study art at Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art.

His experiences in the war, for sure. Moore became the symbol of post-war modernism. According to Tate Britain, “Moore’s art engages with key artistic, intellectual and political issues of his time: the trauma of war – seen in his response to both World Wars, as well as the 1930s descent into war and later Cold War anxieties – together with new ideas of sexuality and the body, and the influence of non-western art, psychoanalysis and Surrealism.”

Henry Moore also found inspiration in natural objects like rocks, bones or shells.

Primitive art played a big role in Moore’s art in the 1920s and 1930s. He would sketch sculptures and artefacts he saw at the British Museum, like prehistoric fertility goddesses or Inuit artefacts.