HENRY MOORE
185
"It was difficult, but something I am glad to have done. I had
never willingly drawn male figures before-only as a student in college.
Everything I had willingly drawn was female. But here, through these
coal-mine drawings, I discovered the male figure and the qualities
of the figure in action. As a sculptor I had previously believed only in
static forms, that is, forms in repose.
"And in both these subjects I think I could have found sculptural
motifs only, if I'd tried to; but at the time I felt a need to accept and
interpret a more 'outward' attitude. And here, curiously enough, is
where, in looking back, my Italian trip and the Mediterranean tradition
came once more to the surface. There was no discarding of those other in–
terests in archaic art and the art of primitive peoples,
qut
rather a clearer
tension between this approach and the humanist emphasis. You will
perhaps remember my writing you in 1943 that I didn't think that either
my shelter or coal-mine drawings would have a very direct or obvious
influence on my sculpture when I would get back to it-except, for
instance, I might do sculpture using drapery, or perhaps do groups of
two or three figures instead of one. As a ma"tter of fact the
Madonna
and Child
for Northampton and the later
Family Groups
actually have
embodied these features. Still I sometimes wonder if both these and the
wartime drawings were not perhaps a temporary resolution of that
conflict which caused me those miserable first six months after I had
left Massaccio behind in Florence and had once again come within
the attraction of the archaic and primitive sculptures of the British
Museum."
JAMES JoHNSON SwEENEY
