Pas à pas > "Apprentissage : prémices d’un sculpteur"

« Je me suis rendu compte que les grands sculpteurs que j’admirais — Michel-Ange, Le Bernin, Rodin — étaient tous de grands dessinateurs. » Henry Moore est formé à l’École d’art de Leeds, en Angleterre, au tout début des années 1920. Il y apprend le dessin mais se rêve déjà sculpteur. À sa demande, le directeur de l’école ouvre un département de sculpture dont il est un temps l’unique élève. Ses dessins de l’époque manifestent déjà un intérêt pour la figure humaine et la représentation des corps, qui l’occuperont dans les années qui suivent. Le dessin est alors un formidable outil pour
comprendre la sculpture.

The advent of a sculptor

“I realised that the great sculptors I admired —Michelangelo, Bernini, Rodin — were all great draughtsmen.” In the early 1920s, Henry Moore studied at Leeds School of Art in England. This is where he learned to draw, but already his ambition was to become a sculptor. At Moore’s request, the school director opened a sculpture department and for some time he was the only student.The teaching was somewhat academic, but a visit to the British Museum in London would open the artist’s eyes to a multitude of distant and unfamiliar civilizations, from which he drew new sources of inspiration. His drawings at that time already concentrated on the human figure and the representation of the body, which would dominate his work in the years to come. For Moore, drawing was a prime tool for understanding sculpture.