Balancing between glory and destruction— to view this statue is to observe the opposing outcomes of war.  Artist Henry Moore is most known for sculpting reclining female figures with gentle lines and soft edges.  His style takes on new meaning when it is used to convey the violence of combat.  A reclining figure is a man struggling to stay upright.  Soft dimples are the gruesome marks of wounds.  Rounded edges are the shocking ends of missing limbs.  In the aftermath of World War II, Moore uses the balance between the softness of style and the brutality of subject to capture the shift between romantic ideas of heroism and the tragic realities of war.

The scoring on the bronze surface of the sculpture illustrates scars or wounds from battle, still fresh in the midst of combat.

A pebble found on a beach inspired Moore to create Warrior with Shield.  Its shape reminded Moore of the stump of a leg amputated at the hip.  He writes, “Just as Leonardo says somewhere in his notebooks that a painter can find a battle scene in the lichen marks on a wall, so this [a pebble] gave me the start of The Warrior idea.”

This piece is the first large-scale bronze cast Moore has done of a male subject alone.  More familiar with female figures or group sculptures, Moore says its making was like discovering an entirely new subject matter.

After a trip to Greece, Moore became fascinated with ancient art.  He was drawn to the straight-forward plainness of its style and used the basic forms of the human body to express his thoughts.  The simple and round shape of the head boldly communicates the determination of the warrior to continue fighting and endure pain.