It may seem odd to pair these two,” said Richard Calvocoressi, Director of The Henry Moore Foundation, referring to the forthcoming autumn exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum that brings together works by Francis Bacon and Henry Moore. “Moore is all about structure, endurance, stability, and Bacon quite the contrary: dissolution, flux, the dissolving of flesh.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) and Francis Bacon (1909–1992), the pre-eminent British artists of the 20th century, were both dealing with the human body — the human condition — even if at first sight their approaches were very different. Both were dealing with the figure in space, and were very much affected by their time — the fractured post- and inter-war world that made its troubled way into their unforgettable creations.

Though Bacon was primarily painter and Moore, a sculptor who drew superbly, the visual links between the two are many — and are surprisingly easy to pick up once they have been brought to one’s attention, so much so that they swiftly seem self-evident.

Take for instance, the reclining figure, the groups of three, heads, and fragmented or truncated figures that make up the show’s main themes. Francis Bacon Henry Moore: Flesh and Bone will display 20 paintings by Bacon alongside 20 sculptures and 20 drawings by Moore, borrowed from public and private collections.

They have been selected by curators Calvocoressi and Martin Harrison, editor of the Francis Bacon catalogue raisonné, to bring out similarities and differences between the artists and their work.

“There are five to six big Henry Moore sculptures in the show,” Calvocoressi said. All are from the 1950s: King and Queen, Falling Warrior, Reclining Figure: Festival, Woman, and Three Upright Motives, which Calvocoressi counts as three works. Bacon and Moore were close in age though not close friends — they had vastly different personalities — but were working at the same time on similar subjects, so why is it ‘odd’ to pair them?

“Apart from showing together a couple of times in the 1960s, in London, their work never had really been looked at in the same way. Not juxtaposed. Critics and curators tend to separate their achieve-ments rather than relate them. They were not seen as complementary. One of the main points of this exhibition is to bring their work together to see what each was doing and compare them,” Calvocoressi replied.

“Part of the reason for doing this in Oxford is Francis Warner (then a tutor in English Literature at St Peter's College). I attended a lecture he gave in 1970 where he looked at the two artists together,” said Calvocoressi. What he recalls most about that slide talk was Warner’s conviction that the two, having lived through two World Wars — in Moore’s case experiencing the trenches on active service in the first; Official War Artist in the second (some Shelter drawings are on show) — and having experienced destruction and the Blitz (Bacon served in Air Raid Precautions), both were “restoring the human body, not to a state of perfection or even wholeness, but to a kind of dignified, animal resignation in the face of isolation and suffering”.

“Certainly there’s a marked change in Bacon’s figures after the late 40’s; they are much more broken and battered.” Bacon’s forms were becoming more sculptural and plastic and, apparently, he longed to do sculpture, and asked Warner, a friend of both artists, to put it to Moore about having some sculpture lessons from him.

Nothing came of it. Just as Bacon’s work was moving in a sculptural direction, Moore’s was becoming more painterly, towards more soft fluid edges alternating with hard. There are so many parallels. Both were absolute one-offs; neither was part of an artistic group. Both hugely admired classical antiquity, especially Michelangelo, and Rodin; both reverted to Christian imagery though neither was religious, reimagining themes such as the Crucifixion; and Surrealism was another link. Yet it’s taken 50 years for the two to be examined together again in a dedicated exhibition.

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
September 12-January 19
Visit ashmolean.org