Henry Moore and Czechoslovak Art after 1945
21/06/24–19/01/25

British artist Henry Moore (1898–1986) is considered a leading representative of modern sculpture whose work influenced individual artists as well as entire stylistic tendencies. Working with a detailed chronology, the exhibition explores the diplomatic framework and other mechanisms involved in the presentation and reception of Moore’s art during the Cold War. Mainly, however, it looks at his work’s influence on Czechoslovak sculpture in the second half of the 20th century.

The exhibition presents well-known and lesser-known artists from throughout the country who were inspired by Moore’s art, who further developed the way he worked with biomorphic shapes and internal and external space, or who experimented with sculptural forms somewhere between abstraction and figuration. For the exhibition, the gallery has managed to receive several of Henry Moore’s original works on loan. These have been installed alongside pieces by Czechoslovak sculptors reflecting a diversity of artistic positions. The nearly one hundred sculptures and works on paper have been organised into mutually interrelated groups in order to reflect the main impulses of Moore’s work while presenting Czechoslovak sculpture from a new perspective.

The exhibition is accompanied by an eponymous publication that looks at Moore’s influence on Czechoslovak sculpture under the specific conditions of state socialism within the broader social, political and art-historical contexts.

The exhibition was supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Statutory City of Hradec Králové.