‘Henry Moore -The Printmaker’ exhibition to travel to Albania

TIRANA, August 13 – Tirana will be the third regional stop of Henry Moore – The Printmaker, an exhibition of 86 works by the late British artist featuring his legacy. After showing in neighbouring Macedonia and Montenegro earlier this year, the exhibition will travel to Albania in mid-September to showcase at the National Art Gallery in Tirana. The exhibition includes maquettes and prints from the British Council Collection, some of which were donated by Henry Moore for the 50th anniversary of the British Council in 1984. The British Council, and the Henry Moor Foundation, which are organizing the exhibition, say Moor’s works will be displayed in Tirana on September 15. The works form part of an extensive art collection, amassed over the past 70 years, which is used to promote British art, craft and design throughout the world.
Born in 1898 in northern England, Henry Moore, studied sculpture at Leeds College of Art and at the Royal College of Art in London. His carvings in the late 1920s and ’30s attracted much press criticism, with charges of ugliness and distortion of the human form. Moore continued in the face of this hostility, with the growing support of the art establishment and friends such as Herbert Read and Kenneth Clark, who was Director of the National Gallery. His work progressed through the years, exploring themes on the reclining figure and the mother and child, with brief excursions into other areas of enquiry such as animals and natural forms. All of the subjects that concerned him were explored in sculpture – carved in many different stones and wood, or cast in bronze – in drawings and in prints. As his reputation rose, his studio developed into an atelier with several assistants who helped to enlarge his work to a monumental scale.
Moore was the recipient of many awards and honours. He was awarded the first International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1948, thus beginning a long and close relationship with the British Council. His work has been exhibited worldwide and is represented in major national collections. In 1977 Henry Moore formed the Henry Moore Foundation, a charitable organisation which still administers the allocation of grants, bursaries and scholarships to promote sculpture within the cultural life of Britain today. The Henry Moore Foundation also cares for the artist’s former studios and for a large collection of Moore’s sculptures, drawings and graphics.