Culture | Exhibitions Henry Moore’s drawings are far less well known than his sculpture, and the first thing that strikes you about them is how monumental and sculptural they are. This is true even when he’s drawing people in a particular time and place: in the tunnels of the Underground during the Blitz, in the coalmines of Wales in the war from which Moore made hundreds of sketches from 1940 to 1941. These form the basis of the exhibition.
In one picture, there’s a woman in a hat resting her head wearily against a wall; she could be a 15th century pilgrim – her dress is of no time and place. The individual is undefined but there’s a sense of a ravaged face, a ravaged life, against a ravaged brick wall. People are sleeping under sheets next to each other; they look like figures on a medieval tomb, awaiting the last Trump (not that one).
People lying in rows in the tunnel look like so many little Henry Moore statues, all undifferentiated and immobile but curiously moving. This brilliant little exhibition is called Shadows on a Wall and the title is taken from a play based loosely on the return of Odysseus written for BBC radio by Edward Sackville West with a score by Benjamin Britten (why don’t we have stuff like that now; play it again!) and Moore illustrated the published edition. You didn’t think he did illustrations, did you? There is a shadow on a wall, drawn by Penelope, that of Odysseus: here ghostly, like a cave painting.
The common theme is exactly that.
