A close look at the work, relationship, and shared influences of two masterful 20th-century artists

“The camera,” said Orson Welles, “is a medium via which messages reach us from another world.” It was the camera and the circumstances of the Second World War that first brought together Henry Moore (1898–1986) and Bill Brandt (1904–1983). During the Blitz, both artists produced images depicting civilians sheltering in the London Underground. These “shelter pictures” were circulated to millions via popular magazines and today rank as iconic works of their time. This book begins with these wartime works and examines the artists’ intersecting paths in the postwar period. Key themes include war, industry, and the coal mine; landscape and Britain’s great megalithic sites; found objects; and the human body. Special photographic reproduction captures the materiality of the print as a three-dimensional object rather than a flat, disembodied image on the page.

Published by the Yale Center for British Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The Hepworth Wakefield
(February 7–November 1, 2020)

Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich
(November 21, 2020–February 28, 2021)

Yale Center for British Art
(November 17, 2022–February 26, 2023)

Contributions by: Lynda Nead, Nicholas Robbins, Audrey Sands, Robert Sutton, John Tagg, Alex Potts, Simon Wallis, Carol Armstrong, Sebastiano Barassi, Eleanor Clayton