Henry Moore: Complete Drawings Volume 4 1950-76

Limited availability. First Edition hardcover.

Please note there is some discolouration to the pages and there is some warping in the dust jackets because these copies have been stored since 2003. This is reflected in the price, no refunds or replacements will issued.

The first three volumes of the catalogue raisonné of Henry Moore's drawings could be conveniently divided, with a few exceptions, into those produced in the 1920s, the 1930s and the 1940s. Volume 5 and 6 cover drawings done between 1982 and 1981 and between 1982 and 1983. Volume 7, as well as including a complete index and concordance to all the volumes, also lists about 800 drawings dating from the final period of the artists's life, 1984-86.

About 1500 entries and accompanying illustrations feature in this fourth volume. From a research point of view, Volume 4 posed the most challenges and problems. In the course of the twenty-six years covered by this volume Moore used many notebooks, some large, some very small, some began in one year and then laid aside, forgotten or indeed mislaid until the artist took them up again several years later. When exhibitions were planned, Moore would detach drawings from these notebooks, often only minimally catalogued before being sold on to other galleries or private collectors around the world. These factors have created considerable problems in deciding the chronology and media of drawings done over a period of a quarter of a century. 

Although Moore's overwhelming preoccupation between 1950 and 1976 was sculpture, he nonetheless found time to experiment with with different media, drawing with felt tipped pens on tissue paper laid down on drawing paper, for example. He also drew on blotting papers, using random offset patches of watercolour as a starting point for his imaginations which never faltered in spite of the increasing physical frailty which beset him as his eightieth birthday approached.