Henry Moore (1898-1986), one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th Century, created striking three-dimensional forms using many different techniques – carving, casting, modelling – and many different materials – stone, bronze, iron, wood, concrete, polystyrene. In the words of Herbert Read (1965, p 259)
He is a maker of images – or, as I prefer to call them because they have material existence – of icons, and he is impelled to make these icons by his sense of the forms that are vital to the life of mankind.
Each of Moore’s works was derived from nature, but Moore simplified and abstracted the experience to provide an emotional understanding rather than a sensory representation This essay comments on the nature of form and considers some of Moore’s works.