Henry Moore

by Giulio Carlo Argan

A brief biography of Henry Moore followed by a description and analysis of his sculptures and drawings through 1966.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published November 29, 1965

About the author

Giulio Carlo Argan was an Italian art historian and politician.

He was born in Turin and studied in the University of Turin, graduating in 1931. In 1928 he entered the National Fascist Party. In the 1930 he worked for the National Antiquity and Arts Directorate, first in Turin and then in Modena and Rome, where he collaborated to the creation of the Istituto Centrale di Restauro and directed the magazine Le Arti. His career was boosted by the friendship of the Fascist leader Cesare Maria De Vecchi, then national Minister of Education.

In 1938 he published a manual of art for high schools, while in the 1940s he collaborated to the magazine Primato, founded and directed by Giuseppe Bottai, another Fascist gerarca. After World War II, he taught in universities Palermo and, from 1959, in Rome. Argan co-founded the publisher Il Saggiatore and he was a member of the Superior Council of Antiquities and Fine Arts (predecessor of the Ministry of Culture), in which he remained until 1974. In 1968 he published his most famous work, Storia dell'Arte Italiana. In 1973 he founded Rome ISIA, Italy's oldest institution in the field of industrial design.

He was the first Communist mayor of Rome, between 1976 and 1979. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992. He died in Rome.

Reviews

[Eric Cartier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love these Praeger World of Art Profile books. I own and thoroughly enjoyed reading the volumes on Miro and Klee, and this study of Moore and his work is similarly enriching. Moore's artworks are strewn about the world - I've been lucky to spend time contemplating them at the Hirshhorn in DC, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena - so I wanted to see more of them and learn how they came to be. The photographs of the sculptures are particularly excellent, and Read tells us Moore took most of them himself, as he was the best photographer of his own work. The narrative surrounding the artist's development over the decades is intriguing, too. Perhaps the only drawbacks to this volume are that Moore was still a working artist when it was published, and that the author and Moore were lifelong friends, so Read's critical interpretations weren't entirely disinterested. Regardless, it's worth seeking out if Moore's figures are alluring to you.

I know that books in the Praeger World of Art series are still out there, turning up at library book sales, so I hope to get my hands on the Munch volume someday soon.

[Mina Nenadovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on artists. Written with much love and understanding, really captures a great big period of his sculpture work and life.