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©
The Henry Moore Foundation
Henry Moore

Three Seated Figures

1941
Indian ink with charcoal, wax crayon... on papel mounted on board.
48 x 37 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
682
(
1976.57
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop

Drawing became an ideal medium for the British sculptor Henry Moore as it enabled him to explore his ideas for sculptures in two dimensions. When the infernal Blitz began on 7 September 1940 and the sky above London was filled with German bombers that destroyed much of the city, forcing over a hundred thousand civilians to seek refuge in the underground stations, Moore produced his moving series known as the Shelter Drawings, which are among the most significant images in war mythology. According to the artist’s own account, on the night of 11 September 1940, when he and his wife Irina had to take cover from an air raid in the Belsize Park underground station near his house, he was touched by the sight of the people camping out in the station’s tunnels. “I saw hundreds of Henry Moore Reclining Figures stretched along the platforms, ” he wrote, adding that “even the train tunnels seemed to be like the holes in my sculpture.”

Shortly afterwards, in January 1941, Moore received an invitation through Kenneth Clark, then director of The National Gallery in London, from the WAAC (War Artists’ Advisory Committee) to become an official war artist and for over a year he devoted himself solely to making numerous sketches and drawings inspired by that vision. These drawings were not done from life, but at his house in Perry Green, on the outskirts of London, to which he had to move after his London studio was bombed in 1940.

Three Seated Figures, executed in 1941, is one of the drawings from the aforementioned series. The air of silence that pervades the scene and the dramatic force of the female figures, who stand out against the brick walls of the tube station, matchlessly capture the feeling of expectation and resilience of these people in the underground shelter. The empathy with which it is executed and Moore’s manner of conveying the tension of these people suggest a humanism with existentialist overtones. Furthermore, the monumentality of the three figures, who are swathed tightly in drapery, recalls the archaic sculpture which had such a great influence on Moore during those years. The allusion to the theme of the Three Graces also denotes the influence of Mediterranean tradition. The artist himself described this time as the period “after I had left Masaccio behind in Florence and had once again come within the attraction of the archaic and primitive sculptures of the British Museum.”

Paloma Alarcó

20th Centurys. XX - Figuración en la posguerra europeaWork on paperIndian ink with charcoal, wax crayon...papel mounted on board
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Three Seated Figures. Tres figuras sentadas, 1941
Three Seated Figures
Henry Moore

©

The Henry Moore Foundation

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Three Seated Figures. Tres figuras sentadas, 1941
Three Seated Figures
Henry Moore

©

The Henry Moore Foundation

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