The Guastalla Centro Arte Gallery presents a selection of original graphic works by Henry Moore, considered the most famous English sculptor of the 20th century, born in 1898 and died in 1986. With this exhibition we want to pay a small tribute to this important artist with whom we were lucky enough to collaborate and whom we were able to attend thanks to our common friendship with another great sculptor such as Marino Marini.

In this exhibition there are some original graphic works, divided between etchings, aquatints and lithographs, made between 1967 and 1979, the graphic production is of particular importance in the work of Henry Moore: the theme of the reclining and seated figure is recurrent, sometimes taking on more figurative connotations and other times decidedly more abstract forms, the studies of mother with child and the scenes of young students doing their homework.

This great English artist had a close bond with Italy and Tuscany in particular, especially from the '60s: after several stays, he settled in 1965 in Forte dei Marmi to better follow the processing of his sculptures in marble, stone and bronze in the workshops of Pietrasanta and here he met Marino Marini with whom he had a friendship united by the search for those primitive elements of art in Tuscan culture that led him to the study of the Etruscans, the Romanesque and the Renaissance. Henry Moore himself wrote: "In the course of my life I believe I have gone through few worse periods than that which followed my trip to Italy in 1925-26. Six months under the barrage of masterpieces of European art had unleashed a violent conflict with my previous ideals, I was dejected and unable to work, but little by little I managed to get out of my perplexities and the direction was that of my primitive interests. I returned to ancient Mexican art, at the British Museum. I believe today that in this conflict between the great suggestion exerted on me by Mexican sculpture and the love and sympathy for Italian art, two contrasting aspects of my nature are reflected, hardness and gentleness..."

His strong bond with Tuscany had its natural consecration with the great exhibition that the city of Florence dedicated to him at the Forte di Belvedere in 1972: it was a huge success and this exhibition remains one of the most important ever held, by Henry Moore.