How did Pablo Picasso’s art influence Henry Moore in the 1930s?

During the 1930s, Henry Moore was significantly influenced by the drawings and paintings produced by Pablo Picasso in the late 1920s. Moore admired these works for their strong sculptural implications, which encouraged him to adopt a more radical approach to his own art.1

Specifically, Picasso’s influence empowered Moore to distort and break up the forms of the human body more aggressively than he had previously attempted. This shift allowed Moore to experiment with abstract shapes and, at times, move away from the human figure entirely in favor of organic and natural forms. By applying these principles of distortion, Moore began to "open up" his carvings, incorporating concavities and holes pierced through his sculptures—a technique that was considered shocking to the public at the time when applied to human-like figures. Ultimately, Moore’s work throughout this period reflected a synthesis of these modernist figural distortions with his own interest in natural rhythms and humanist values.12