“The distinguishing quality of most primitive art is the intense vitality which it possesses, because it has been made by a people in close touch with life, who felt simply and strongly, and whose art was a means of expressing vitally important beliefs, hopes and fears. Negro sculpture is essentially religious and cannot be detached from the tribal gods, priests and ancient rituals. When civilization destroyed these things, it also destroyed their Art. These carvings have a serious and pathetic power – a bigness and monumental simplicity born of the racial patience in bearing life with all its terror and mystery.. ..(But as always, it was the artist who was the first to see in them a new thing – a new plastic conception – an artistic worth – a value as art – their importance as art).”
“A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.”
Henry Moore
“There is no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there is no end to it.”
Henry Moore
“The Negroes.. ..their unique claim for admiration is their power to produce form completely in the round.. .Negro sculpture is completely in the round, fully-conceived air-surrounded form.”
Henry Moore
“I prefer Mexican to Mayan sculpture. Mexican stone sculptures have largeness of scale & a grim, sublime, austerity, a real stoniness. They were the true sculptors in sympathy with their material & the...”
Henry Moore
“This is what the sculptor must do. He must strive continually to think of, and use, form in its full spatial completeness. He gets the solid shape, as it were, inside his head - he thinks of it, whats...”
Henry Moore