Crisis and Aftermath: The 1940s and 1950s

During the war years, when materials were scarce and opportunities rare, Moore found it impossible to execute major sculptural projects. Increasingly conscious of the war's devastating effect, he began to sketch Londoners seeking shelter in the Underground Railway during the German air raids of 1940. His drawings, powerful evocations of human suffering in gouache and ink, proved exceptionally popular with British audiences, boosting Moore's reputation. In 1940, Kenneth Clark, a mentor, appointed him an official war artist, a salaried position in the British government. He commissioned Moore to make drawings of coal miners at Wheldale Colliery in Castleford, a mining pit once managed by Moore's father. Moore thus continued his investigations into the dark subterranean worlds that had intrigued him in London, documenting "carvers" of a very different kind.

Later that year, after his old studio in Hampstead was bombed, Moore moved north of London to the small village of Much Hadham. His work softened, reflecting Moore's deepened interest in human relationships and connections with the natural environment. In 1946, his only child Mary was born, leading to a series of works evoking family life. At the same time, his career reached new heights as the Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited his work in a major retrospective. Following the horrors and destruction of World War II, Moore's wholesome and universal imagery suggested spiritual rebirth and found widespread approval.

After the war, Moore briefly ventured into darker thematic territory, confronting demons both private and public. The emaciated body of Warrior with Shield, for example, is precariously perched on a plinth, his amputated limbs piercing the air like a silent scream, his head gashed. In a dark and shocking variation on the mother and child theme, Moore depicted a spindly, birdlike child sharply attacking her mother's breast. The brutality of their encounter is matched only by the rough, tortuous quality of the sculpture's metal surface.