BIO

In 1924 Moore was appointed as sculpture instructor at the Royal College. He met his future wife Irina Radetsky, at the college. The couple lived in Hampstead, where they mingled with many aspiring young artists and writers, including Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Stephen Spender and Herbert Read. His first commission, in 1928, was to produce a sculpture relief for the newly opened Headquarters of London Transport. His first one-man exhibition, which consisted of forty-two sculptures and fifty-one drawings, opened at the Warren Gallery in 1928. In the 1930s came three more one-man shows, all at the Leicester Galleries. Moore also participated in major group exhibitions of the time. In 1931 he exhibited three works in the Plastik exhibition in Zurich. In 1936 Moore signed the manifesto urging the end of a policy of non-intervention in Spain. In 1940 their Hampstead home was damaged by a nearby bomb, and the Moores rented a house in Perry Green, a small hamlet in Hertfordshire. Here the artist would remain for the rest of his life. In the early 1940s he had begun to make drawings of people sheltering from air-raids in the London Underground. These drawings, together with those he made subsequently in the coalmines, are considered among his greatest achievements. His designs for Ascher swiftly followed.