British Council British Council Visual Arts

An exhibition of 53 sculptures, 44 drawings and 11 documentary photographs.

Various language versions of the catalogue, with an introduction by Herbert Read, were published to accompany the exhibition at each overseas venue. No ISBN numbers

Reviews

Brussels

The exhibition was shown in the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels from October 8th to 30th, under the joint auspices of the British Council and the Belgian Ministry of Education, within the framework of the Anglo-Belgian Cultural Convention. Various receptions were given for the sculptor in Brussels at which he met many critics and artists. The Council also arranged for Mr Geoffrey Grigson to visit Brussels during the course of the exhibition to lecture on Mr Moore's work.

Official figures for the three weeks, excluding the private view at which 500 were present, were 3,439. the population of Brussels being approximately one million. Comparable figures for two other exhibitions of modern sculpture held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts since the war are: 1947, Zadkine 1,514; 1948 Laurents 3,804.

Articles in the press were numerous and strongly divided in opinion. Out of a total of 66 articles, 34 were in French; 30 in Flemish and 2 in English. The principal attacks were in two extreme right-wing papers, the weekly Phare Dimanche and the daily La Libre Belgique which carried three successive articles attacking the exhibition. The latter articles, which were largely political in tone with very little aesthetic comment, were directed chiefly against the Ministry of Education, the Cultural Convention, and the Palais des Beaux-Arts, rather than the British Council, whose work in other directions has often been favourably commented on in this paper. Strictures on the policy of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in sponsoring foreign exhibitions, while allowing native artists to starve, resembled, though more acid in tone, those directed in this country against the policies of the Arts Council and the British Council. Appreciative and better informed articles appeared in La Nouvelle Gazette and Le Soir, and other papers carried reports of Mr Grigson's lectures, and a translation of an article by Sir Philip Hendy originally published in Britain Today.

The Representative in Belgium comments:
It is difficult to decide which way these attacks affected the attendance. Probably the second article in La Libre Belgique sent a lot of people to the exhibition. On the other hand, one saw fewer of the outraged conservative type of visitor than one would have expected. The majority were young and seemed deeply interested, if not always convinced. It was clear from the number of languages overheard that many visitors to Brussels were attracted. There were frequent discussions in front of individual pieces of sculpture and several people paid repeated visits. There was a considerable number of parties from schools and from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Brussels and the nearer provinces.

Paris

The exhibition was shown in the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, from 19th November to 1st January, under the auspices of the Direction des Musées de France and the Direction General des Relations Culturelles.

The press view held on the 17th November was attended by 48 art critics and by the next day fully illustrated articles appeared in Arts, Art d'aujourd'hui, Le Figaro and L'age nouveau. A cocktail party was given by the British Council representative in honour of Mr Moore on the evening of the same day to about 120 guests.

The British Ambassador, the Directeur-General des Arts et des Lettres, the Directeur General des Musées de France were present at the private view which took place on 18th November between 3 and 5 pm. Over 1,500 people visited the exhibition which was the highest figure the Museum had ever had for a private view.

The collection occupied the same space as that for the Leger exhibition which preceded it; although the display was as arranged as possible in this not very happily designed museum, it did not show to the same advantage as it did in the greater space and better lit galleries at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

The Fine Arts Officer (Roland Penrose) in Paris commented that 'the Musée d'art Moderne attracts people who are definitely interested in modern art'. He mentions also the quality and enthusiasm of the visitors from all parts of France, some as remote as Nice, Bordeaux and Strasbourg.

He goes on to say that 'the success of the Moore exhibition is by far the most remarkable British triumph in France' and bases his opinion on the attendance figures (254 visitors a day), the quality of visitors and the enthusiasm of the critical articles. Frank Elgar, whom he calls 'one of the most sincere but bitterly aggressive French critics wrote in the popular weekly Carrefour in 1945 commenting on the British Council exhibition of contemporary painting shown in Paris in that year:

'The work of all these artists floats in a halo of sentimentality, fussiness and tasteless romanticism … Sutherland is without doubt the most original and sensitive of the group and if Moore had more 'humanity' in his work he owes it to the influence of his continental masters'.

and in 1949 in the same paper Elgar wrote

Henry Moore is without doubt the greatest sculptor of our time. We are grateful to the British Council for convincing us of this by organising this very important exhibition.

The Fine Arts Officer concludes his report by saying:
It is not only an artistic but a psychological triumph over a most adverse metal attitude deeply rooted in the French mind - that of non-recognition of art from abroad … We can now safely say that Moore's name is a by-word of artistic fame in the International School of Paris. The whole is a healthier state of affairs for British art than we have ever seen in Paris.

Amsterdam

Following the press view on January 12th which was very well attended, both by critics and sculptors, the exhibition was opened on the 13th January at the Stedelijk Museum by the Burgomaster of Amsterdam who, in the works of Mr Roger Hinks the British Council Representative, extricated himself adroitly from the embrace of Field-Marshall Lord Montgomery, who as usual chose to visit Amsterdam on a day when we were having an important event'. There were what Dr Sandberg, the Director of the Stedelijk Museum, considered to be an unusually large number of people present, including representatives of the Ministry of Education and the British Embassy, and most of the members of the Mixed Commission of the Franco-Dutch Cultural Convention, who happened to be in Amsterdam that day. The Representative in his remarks at the opening drew attention to the admirable presentation of the exhibition by Dr Sandberg. The sculptures were arranged in four large galleries in their chronological order, following very closely the numbering in the catalogue. All concerned including the sculptor considered it to be a very happily conceived display and that the works showed to better advantage than in either Brussels or Paris.

The total number of visitors recorded was 8,538 but this figure does not include those who visited the exhibition on the free evenings. Press cuttings from Amsterdam have shown that the exhibition met with widespread interest, reasoned assessment, and on the whole well-informed appreciation. Although a few critics were cool, there was little antagonism, and the most important daily and weekly publications carried long and carefully considered articles. In its weekly supplement of 21 January the Nieuwe Rotterdam Courant (comparable to the Manchester Guardian) have a half page article:

Moore is a realist in a new sense, who allows his material its own actual beauty, and he is an aesthete in a new sense, who with endless patience and reverent wonder interprets this beauty in its utmost possibilities. That could never have come about unless Moore completely sublimated his forms into pure - indeed puritanical - sculpture… Whoever has any feeling for pure sculptural worth will immediately recognize the great gifts at the disposal of Moore … Moore is one of the few exceptions to the rule that England lags behind in the development of plastic art … One can recognize many virtues in his work that are peculiar to England, - a refined and qualified craftsmanship, a noble repose and cool reserve.

A writer in Parool (a popular daily) on 21 January said that the works 'were able to do no more that arouse in me a cool respect, - for the workmanship, for the rounded accomplishment, for this hard worker; respect for the balanced personality, for the feeling for the monumental, for the vast contained form to which this work testifies. I was not stirred in the spirit by them; they did not give me that petite sensation of which Cézanne speaks, the very core of all art.'>p>

Hamburg

The showing of the exhibition in Hamburg, where it was visited by under 3,000 people, cannot be counted an unqualified success. It was housed in a far less suitable gallery than expected, badly situated and in bad repair, and although for a long time before Dr Heise, the Director of the Kunsthalle, had been asking for the Council to send an exhibition of this kind, he seems at the last minute rather to have lost his nerve. This was perhaps understandable in the circumstances as described by the British Council Liaison Offer in Germany, who said in his report:

It was most unfortunate that the opening of the Henry Moore exhibition in Hamburg should have coincided exactly in time with the attempted demolition of the largest dock in Hamburg. Whether or not this particular dock should be demolished had for a long time been the subject of bitter discussion between the Germans and the British; the Germans maintaining that its destruction would endanger a tunnel running under the river Elbe. In order to allay German fears the Regional Commissioner, Dr Dunlop, went and sat in the tunnel while the dock was being blown up. Had he not been sitting in the tunnel he would have been opening the exhibition, to which he sent his deputy. It is a fact therefore that the exhibition opened at a time when British-German relations in Hamburg were at the worst they have been for a very long time. Undoubtedly in many ways the tense Anglo-German relationship contributed in no small degree to the apparent abstention on the part the Hamburg public from the Henry Moore exhibition.

At the opening a long discourse placing Henry Moore's work in historical perspective was given by Dr Werner Haftmann, a young art critic from Munich. He wrote later in Die Zeit (22 March) 'Like proper similes of our modern existence these strange pieces of sculpture stand solemn, lonely, and massive as if planted on waste beaches; even the smallest figures express the feeling of lost loneliness and of vastness against wider horizons. If art can express the peculiar humanity of a period in a spiritual form, then this expression is to be found in the work of Moore'.

Die Welt (22 March) related Henry Moore to the political gloom of the times. 'The importance of Henry Moore - however one reacts to his work - is so great today that a judgement of his work demands a serious analysis of one's own artistic conscience … The work of Henry Moore, utterly without humour or cheerfulness (which are both spiritual qualities) represents all of us in our western impotence against mass and the machine. But this impotence may vanish once we become deeply aware of it. Why - speaking very plainly - has Moore's sculpture nothing in common with a work of art? These figures are at the mercy of a hand which at any time may come along with a chisel to add another hollow at any point of this or that figure and, if cleverly done, nothing would be altered. … Look around in the tram: everywhere Henry Moore! What he experienced in the shelters during the Blitz we should be able to understand too … Sweat, blood, and tears. That's what it is: man hunted by the machine taking refuge in the earth!.

Dr Heise writing in the Hamburger Echo (21 March) after condemning the Russian official attitude to art as much as Hitler's condemnation of all progressive German art as 'degenerate', urged people to go the exhibition with an open mind. 'It is not a question of uncritical admiration for his strange unique new conception of sculpture and drawing, but a question of enlarging our artistic horizon badly narrowed down through the war and Hitler influences. It means an attempt to feel and appreciate the powerful new expression of life that fills these works'.

Düsseldorf

The exhibition, which was shown at the Kunstmuseum, assumed greater importance in Düsseldorf than in Hamburg, and proved to be more popular. The Cultural Relations Officer of the Control Commission, Mr Lionel Perry, wrote on 14 June 'Perhaps you would like to know that the museum here consider the Moore exhibition to have been unusually successful for an exhibition of sculpture. There were 4,243 visitors and five conducted tours were also made. The museum received a large number of enquiries from sculptors and students (some of whom want to come to England of course).'

Gerhardt G Kramer write in the Rhein-Echo (3 May)

Those who have permeated into the shapes of these sculptural creatures of Henry Moore will be surprised to recognize all of a sudden in trees and stones outside the same shape, the same principles of naturally grown or found objects, something of which they may probably become especially conscious through the example of Henry Moore. It is the expression of the essential and natural language of shapes. … One perceives here he reality, the power which creates beings with extreme justness to the material, which stand between natural creation and formed creation in the sense of order and solid compactness - and just the fact, that these sculptures in stone and wood have the greatest effect outside, in the open, proves their organic form, even id at first glance it appears as an abrupt or intentional intervention in 'established' forms. They are reduced to the nucleus, to the curve; the free play of the hollow spaces does not contribute to the 'naturalness of man', but it furthers the peculiar character of the forms so that they grow, flow together, and close in inner and outer imposing and harmonious impression. Only after one has recognized the simple power which in ancient Germanic sculptures piles up stones into monuments, after one has recognized the same language in trees, shells, stones and other phenomena, then one will understand the forms of Moore without the deviation of wrong analysis and aesthetic interpretation. If we acknowledge in nature spiritual power and its expression in the language of shapes, if we perceive in tree or stone the grown beauty, or the beauty shaped by the elements, at latent greatness, as order, this also applies then to the creatures and creation of Moore.'

Berne

The exhibition was held in the Kunsthalle, a gallery devoted to temporary exhibitions of modern art, and under the official patronage of the Swiss Minister of the Interior and the British Minister. About three hundred people attended the opening on the evening of 9 June at which in stifling heat a long of appreciation of Moore's work was given in German by Mr John Thwaites who at the invitation of the Kunsthalle travelled from Munich. Henry Moore also visited Berne for the opening and helped with the arrangement of the exhibition.

Dr Rüdlinger, Director of the Kunsthalle, wrote

I was personally very pleased with the exhibition. In my opinion Moore is in the first rank of modern sculptors with Laurens Lipschitz, Marini and Alberto Giacommeti.

Most visitors recognised the seriousness of the work, the clean execution (Handwerkliche Sauberkeit) and the fact that Moore, as few other sculptors, has created comprehensive and very personal work. Swiss art criticism is not of a very high standard. Most critics have difficulty in evaluating modern art. It is, therefore, not to be wondered at that there were also adverse criticisms. Nevertheless, in our opinion, a clear and negative attitude is of more value than a vague and non-committal recognition.

A reviewer in (17 June) wrote that 'The British Council is presenting in the Berne Kunsthalle an exhibition of the works of the English sculptor Henry Moore, who is not only the most famous British sculptor of our times, but one may say of all times. This in itself is not saying much, for English sculpture has distinguished itself by no particular achievements until the coming of Moore…. The watercolours bear witness to the fact that Moore is also England's best modern painter, which, in itself is again not saying much, for English painting has scarcely distinguished itself during the past century by great achievements, although it was always better than English sculpture. Since the decline of England's world power, however, a new world power seems to be proclaiming itself in England: that of sculpture and painting. And the messenger who bears the glad tidings is no limping cripple'.

Throughout the tour the dismantling, packing, unpacking, and re-erection of the exhibition was supervised by a senior member of Fine Arts Department. That this policy was justified has been proved by the fact that even after the works had toured Europe for nine months the sculptor had far less to do to put them into condition to return to their owners than he had had to make them fit for a British Council exhibition when they were first assembled.