Kunsthalle Mannheim / Cem Yücetas
)nicht ausgestellt
Intro
Does this life-size work really depict a “warrior,” as the title states? Not if one takes this to mean a victorious hero. Moore’s figure does not carry a weapon for the purpose of attack, merely a shield with which he attempts to protect himself. As if the battle is still underway, the warrior raises his shield defensively, simultaneously revealing a maimed body.
His left arm and left leg are mutilated, the rib cage crushed. The seated posture is also more suggestive of defensive resignation than aggression. Quite clearly this is not a triumphal hero but a battle-scarred figure. In the context of World War II, Moore’s sculpture acquires a range of meanings, depicting both the wounds left by war and the resistance of those who put up a fight to the very end. However, there is no trace of blind heroism in this major work by the British sculptor.
Background
An important source of inspiration for Moore’s sculptures were found objects, such as stones or bones, which served as stimuli for the artist’s first male representations: “It began with a pebble, which I found on the beach during the summer of 1952 and which made me think of the stump of a leg that had been amputated at the hip.”
From such bony and compact stone formations, Moore developed the idea for his life-size magnum opus, »Warrior with Shield« from 1953/54. A series of plaster models led to this ambivalent bronze figure, which is equipped not with weapons, but rather with a shield. At first sight, the monumental torso does not show a triumphant hero, but rather a figure mutilated and broken in the struggle. While the left side of his body seems deformed and vulnerable, on his right side he is protected by the shield, which he is holding in a defensive position. The shrunken ribcage forms a concave shape, which is mirrored by the convex shield and the right leg with its prominent kneecap, which represents a graphic sign of energy.
Moores warrior figures express in their alternation between passivity and activity, endurance and defence, a sense of “dignity in the face of pain”, with which the british sculptur has created a timeless image of man in the face of war and destruction.
Kunsthalle Mannheim
