Henry Moore. The sculptor's drawing

Henry Moore returns to Florence. Almost fifty years (it was 1972) after the memorable exhibition at the Forte di Belvedere which saw the master of English sculpture as the protagonist, the Museo Novecento decides to pay homage to him with "Henry Moore. The sculptor's drawing ”, exhibition curated by Sebastiano Barassi, Head of Henry Moore Collections and Exhibitions and Sergio Risaliti, Artistic Director of the Museo Novecento. The exhibition, organized in collaboration with the Henry Moore Foundation, with the contribution of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, until 22 August 2021 will see the Florentine museum host a substantial selection of drawings, about seventy, along with graphics and sculptures.

"Having arrived after two years of demanding research to create a scientific collaboration with the prestigious Henry Moore Foundation to bring the master's works back to Florence, about fifty years after the epochal exhibition at the Forte di Belvedere, is a source of pride and immense satisfaction - said Sergio Risaliti, artistic director of the Museo Novecento and curator of the exhibition with Sebastiano Barassi -. “Henry Moore. The Sculptor's Drawing ”, wants to be a gift to the city that has suffered a dramatic pandemic crisis and is coming out of this difficult situation with difficulty but with courage and pride. The presence in this historical moment of Henry Moore's works in Florence is also a reminder of the strength of art in the greatest human and social difficulties. Moore was an artistic beacon in the darkest days of European history and his works are a testament to that. We stubbornly believed in this project, making every effort to bring home the result when adversity became insurmountable even from the point of view of resources. Thanks to the generosity of the sponsors and the convinced support of the Administration, the milestone was reached. We hope that this project will serve as a model for other realities, both for scientific quality and for sustainability. There is another aspect that should be highlighted: the unprecedented nature of the selection of works, which will allow us to get to the heart of the conceptual and formal genesis of the work of the great sculptor who here reveals himself to be a great draftsman. We have said since 2018 that one of the lines of research of the new course of the Museo Novecento would be the graphic work of the artists of the twentieth century in a close link with the great Florentine Renaissance tradition .. And so it was. This exhibition adds another conquest in the path of education and updating, the main function of every modern museum institution. Finally, the link with the territory, so necessary and original of the museum: a territory - Tuscany, Versilia, Florence - to which Moore was linked from his youth, sanctioned by the 1972 exhibition at the Forte di Belvedere, one of the most important of the twentieth century worldwide. Henry Moore is an artist heir and interpreter of humanism in art, but with his art which remains avant-garde he has been able to make an enormous contribution to the genesis of that new artistic humanism that has been able to define differently the notions of beauty and form, in a relationship with nature and the archetypes of knowledge that are very current, figurative revelations of great empathy and poetry, which the public will finally be able to discover with the desired opening of museums ".