95 Quotes by Henry Moore

In my opinion, long and intense study of the human figure is the necessary foundation for a sculptor.

The violent quarrel between the abstractionists and the surrealists seems to me quite unnecessary. All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements - order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious.

I admit clearly and frankly that early Mexican art formed my views of carving as much as anything I could do.

Everything I do is intended to be big.

Since the Gothic, European sculpture has become overgrown with moss, weeds - all sorts of surface excrescences which completely concealed shape. It has been Brancusi's special mission to get rid of this overgrowth and to make us once more shape-conscious.

Turner - whether on canvas or paper - can create almost measurable distances of space and air - air that you can draw, in which you can work out what the section through it would be. The space he creates is not emptiness; it is filled with 'solid' atmosphere.

Cezanne had an enormous influence on everyone in that period; there was a change in attitudes to art. People found him disturbing because they didn't like their existing ideas being challenged and overturned. Cezanne was probably the key figure in my lifetime.

I have no conceit as a writer; in fact, I find it very difficult to start writing about sculpture generally & my aims in particular.

There are three fundamental poses of the human figure. One is standing. The other is seated, and the third is lying down... Of the three poses, the reclining figure gives the most freedom, compositionally and spatially.