Ronald Moody: The less well-known contemporary of Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore

Sculpting Life, which runs at the gallery until November, is the first major exhibition of the work of sculptor Ronald Moody (1900-1984) and explores the development of Moody’s art and his significant place within British and international art history.

A contemporary of artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, Moody is an important and hugely influential figure in 20th century art – his work is in major public collections around the world, including at the Tate and Wakefield’s art collection – yet he is not as well-known as his peers.

This excellent, rich and wide-ranging exhibition seeks to bring Moody’s innovative and compelling works, as well as his extraordinary life story, to a wider audience.

Co-curated by the Hepworth Wakefield’s senior curator Eleanor Clayton and Moody specialist Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, the show features more than 50 sculptures and paintings by Moody, together with archive material on display for the first time, alongside works by other artists of Moody’s generation including Moore and Hepworth, Elizabeth Frink, Jacob Epstein and Edna Manley.

Also a presence in the exhibition is the artist’s niece the filmmaker and editor Cynthia Moody, who died in 2013. In her retirement she devoted her time to documenting and promoting her uncle’s work.

The archive that she assembled, organized and maintained is held at the Tate where Sowinski has spent many years researching it, culminating in her book Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life, the first major book on the artist, published to coincide with the exhibition.

The seeds for the show at the Hepworth were sown around five years ago, explains Clayton.

In 2018 she had been talking to a colleague at Leeds Art Gallery about an artwork the gallery had acquired from the Ronald Moody Trust – a beautiful small wooden 1937 carving entitled L’homme, which appears in the exhibition – and it prompted her to approach the Trust.

“Through that conversation we became aware of Cynthia Moody and what she had been trying to do to secure Ronald Moody’s legacy,” she says. “We also learnt more about his incredible life and work and about Ego’s research.

"Then Ego and I met in 2021 and started talking about the idea of a show, specifically one that would do a few things – contextualize him alongside his contemporaries Hepworth and Moore and the influence on all their work early in their careers of the artefacts in the British Museum.

"We also wanted to cover the whole of Moody’s practice and his involvement with the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), how important he was for the next generation of Caribbean and Black artists working in Britain.

"We saw the exhibition as an opportunity to tell the breadth of his story and of his extremely interesting life, how relentlessly creative and curious he was. From my point of view, I wanted to introduce him and his work to an audience who might not know him – and his work is very accessible.”

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Moody moved to London in 1923 in order to study dentistry, qualifying in 1930. Always interested in art, he often visited the British Museum and was particularly fascinated by the Egyptian art and artefacts he saw there.

He was so inspired by these that after one such visit, he decided to become a sculptor. He taught himself to model – some of his earliest works were made out of bits of plaster left over from dentistry work – and then to carve, primarily in wood.

The exhibition is arranged chronologically, so in the first section there are works from Moody’s early successful exhibitions in Europe and America in the 1930s including the beautiful wooden figurative sculptures Johanaan (1936), L’Homme (1937) and Midonz (1937).

Encouraged by the positive reviews he received following those shows in Europe, Moody and his partner (later wife) Helene Coppel-Cowan moved to Paris in 1938 and stayed there until they had to flee on foot in 1940 shortly before the German army occupied the city.

In one section of the exhibition there are examples of the very moving and powerful unpublished poetry he wrote about his experiences during that period.

These are displayed alongside transcripts of the radio broadcasts he made for the BBC during and after the war including the series Calling the West Indies in which Moody discussed art history and his own artistic practice.

There are also excerpts that visitors can listen to. A specially commissioned work by Sheffield-based artist Kedisha Coakley, a beautiful installation responding to Moody’s work and inspired by Caribbean mythology and ancient Egyptian and Ife culture, is displayed nearby.

While most of his work before the Second World War was in wood or bronze, after the war, Moody began to experiment with concrete and resin casting – one of his better-known works Concrete Family (1963) is a centrepiece of the exhibition.

Alongside that are other figurative sculptures from the 1950s and 1960s as well as some of the many sculptural portraits or busts that he made throughout his career.

They include American actor, singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson, poet and musician Christopher Logue and actor and comedian Terry Thomas, as well as family members including his wife Helene Coppel-Cowan, his niece Cynthia Moody and his brother Harold Moody, a physician who founded the Coloured People’s League in London in 1931 to campaign against racial inequality.

This section also features The Unknown Political Prisoner (1952), on display for the first time since 1965.

Throughout the exhibition there is the sense of an enquiring mind, a creative curiosity and an excitement in the endless possibilities of different materials. Partly because he didn’t have an art school background, Moody was able to create his own very distinctive and intuitive style.

“His style also shows a great resourcefulness,” says Clayton. “Because he didn’t have the institutional support through his career that many of his peers received, he had to be inventive and use cheaper materials, like concrete.”

The response to the exhibition so far has been very positive. “There is a lot that people find very engaging,” says Clayton. “The fact that he came into art in an unconventional way and that he was drawing on lots of different influences.

"People like that he made work of his own friends and family and they respond to the figurative and spiritual nature of his work, as well as the material experimentation.”

Clayton hopes the exhibition will inspire audiences and give Moody’s vital contribution to sculpture the recognition it so obviously deserves.

“We really want people to come and see for themselves that Moody is an artist that ought to be a household name,” she says.

“For me, working on this has been a real career highlight – it has been a huge honour to work with Ego who has been researching Moody for a long time. I am delighted to be part of celebrating his legacy and bringing him to people’s attention.”

Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life runs at the Hepworth Wakefield until November 3. hepworthwakefield.org Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life by Ego Ahaiwe Sowinksi is published by Thames & Hudson