Quotes from Henry Moore

So with the young African artists. What they have to learn from tribal art is not how to copy the traditional forms, but the confidence that comes from knowing that somewhere inside them there should be the vitality which enabled their fathers to produce these extraordinary and exciting forms.

The most striking quality common to all primitive art is its intense vitality. It is something made by a people with a direct and immediate response to life.

The observation of nature is part of an artist's life, it enlarges his form [and] knowledge, keeps him fresh and from working only by formula, and feeds inspiration.

The whole of nature is an endless demonstration of shape and form. It always surprises me when artists try to escape from this.

The observation of nature is part of an artist's life.

I think, what has this day brought me, and what have I given it?

Art is the expression of imagination, not the reproduction of reality.

There's no retirement for an artist, it's your way of living so there's no end to it.

Since the Gothic, European sculpture has become overgrown with moss, weeds - all sorts of surface excrescences which completely concealed shape. It has been Brancusi's special mission to get rid of this overgrowth and to make us once more shape-conscious.

To be an artist is to believe in life.

Cezanne had an enormous influence on everyone in that period; there was a change in attitudes to art. People found him disturbing because they didn't like their existing ideas being challenged and overturned. Cezanne was probably the key figure in my lifetime.

Being an artist is celebrating life.

The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.

Art is not to do with the practical side of making a living. It's to live a fuller human life.

I believe that nothing should be taboo - no theory or prejudice should close one's mind to a discovery.

There are three fundamental poses of the human figure. One is standing. The other is seated, and the third is lying down... Of the three poses, the reclining figure gives the most freedom, compositionally and spatially.

A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds.

The hole connects one side to the other, making it immediately more three-dimensional. A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass.

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.

Turner - whether on canvas or paper - can create almost measurable distances of space and air - air that you can draw, in which you can work out what the section through it would be. The space he creates is not emptiness; it is filled with 'solid' atmosphere.

I have no conceit as a writer; in fact, I find it very difficult to start writing about sculpture generally & my aims in particular.

In Giacometti's work, the armature has once again become the life-line of the sculpture, and also, he's brought back to sculpture a nervous sensitivity which the 'pure carving' side of sculpture can lose sight of altogether.

Everything I do is intended to be big.

In my opinion, long and intense study of the human figure is the necessary foundation for a sculptor.