Artist: Henry Moore

The Acropolis is wonderful—more marvellous than ever I imagined. . . . it’s the greatest thrill I have ever had.
—Henry Moore, 1951

Gagosian presents Henry Moore and Greece, organized in collaboration with the Henry Moore Foundation. Opening September 12, it is the first exhibition of the artist’s work in Greece in twenty years. Featuring a selection of work spanning Moore’s career, it illuminates the artist’s fascination with ancient Greek art, which he developed during a trip to Greece in 1951—a few months before his first retrospective at the Tate, London.

In his early stone and wood carvings, Moore had turned away from classical tradition, deriving inspiration mostly from non-European cultures—for example, African and Mesoamerican art. It was not until the early 1950s, and especially following his 1951 visit to Greece, that his attention became increasingly drawn to Greek art. Modeling in clay or plaster and casting in bronze allowed him to work on a larger scale and to incorporate a greater sense of movement in his sculptures. Fragmentary figures—increasingly male and designed to be seen in the round—show more varied surface treatments than those of his earlier work and often incorporate clinging drapery.

Henry Moore and Greece explores links between Moore’s practice and earlier, antique Greek art, such as Cycladic sculpture. The artist made his one and only visit to mainland Greece in 1951 for an exhibition at the Zappeion Hall in Athens, also traveling to the archaeological sites of Delphi, Olympia, and Mycenae. He did not exhibit again in Athens until 1965. Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge (1961) is one of Moore’s tallest and most striking postwar bronzes, informed by his interest in Cycladic figurines but at the same time recalling The Winged Victory [or Niké] of Samothrace (c. 200–190 BCE). The exhibition also includes casts of Draped Reclining Figure (1952–53), Falling Warrior (1956–57), and the heads of King and Queen (1952–53)—key sculptures in Moore’s dialogue with Greek art.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the Henry Moore Foundation is releasing three previously unpublished prints from a cycle of seven lithographs and etchings that were completed by the artist in 1984. Henry Moore and Greece also features thirty prints and drawings, including three color lithographs from illustrations to Goethe’s Prometheus (Prométhée) (translated into French by André Gide and published in Paris in 1950) that demonstrate Moore’s existing interest in Greek mythological themes; photographs and archival material provide further context.

This is the third collaboration between Gagosian and the Henry Moore Foundation, following the exhibitions Late Large Forms at Britannia Street, London, and West 21st Street, New York, in 2012 and Wunderkammer—Origin of Forms at Davies Street, London, in 2015.

Henry Moore was born in Castleford, England, in 1898 and died in Perry Green, near Much Hadham, England, in 1986. His work is represented in a significant number of major international collections, including the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; Tate, London; British Council, London; Leeds Art Gallery, England; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Japan. Recent exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2010, traveled to Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto); L’atelier, Musée Rodin, Paris (2010); Moore Rodin, Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, England (2013, traveled to Compton Verney, England, 2014); Francis Bacon/Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, England (2013–14); The Power of Nature: Henry Moore in Poland, Centre for Polish Sculpture, Orońsko, Poland (2018–19, traveled to National Museum of Wroclaw, Poland; National Museum of Krakow, Poland); The Helmet Heads, Wallace Collection, London (2019); Henry Moore in Florence, Museo Novecento, Florence, Italy (2022); O’Keeffe and Moore, San Diego Museum of Art (2023, traveled to Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico, 2023, and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2024); and Shadows on the Wall, Courtauld Gallery, London (2024). Moore’s public commissions occupy university campuses, rural sites, and urban centers around the world.

The Henry Moore Foundation was founded by the artist and his family in 1977 to encourage public appreciation of the visual arts. Today it supports innovative sculpture projects through Henry Moore Grants, devises an imaginative program of exhibitions and research at its own venues and worldwide, and preserves the legacy of Moore himself: one of the great sculptors of the twentieth century, who did so much to bring the art form to a wider audience.