Moore and Malaparte

Gagosian is pleased to announce Moore and Malaparte: Rhythm and Form, an exhibition of small-scale sculptures and drawings by Henry Moore in dialogue with three pieces of furniture from Casa Malaparte.

Opening at 9 rue de Castiglione on January 22, 2025, the presentation draws unexpected connections between sculptor and designer, including a fascination with crafting organic forms in tune with the natural world and an immersion in the interaction of these objects with their architectural settings.

“There is in nature a limitless variety of shapes and rhythms from which the sculptor can enlarge his form-knowledge experience.”

Henry Moore

A giant of modern sculpture, Moore revelled in the relationship between art and its environment. In Moore and Malaparte, this connection is brought to life in domestically scaled bronze sculptures featuring themes that recurred throughout the artist’s career.

Works such as Reclining Figure 1945 and Seated Woman Holding Child 1982 are shown atop reproductions of furniture from Casa Malaparte, revealing surprising affinities between Moore’s and Malaparte’s approaches to design. Many of Moore’s works reveal an enthusiasm for organic forms and elemental sites, underscoring his perception of the natural world’s concrete reality as the root of abstract explorations – a vision that resonates with Malaparte’s.

Constructed on the eastern coast of Capri, Italy, Casa Malaparte was designed in 1938 by Curzio Malaparte (the pseudonym of Kurt Erich Suckert), a provocative figure in the Italian avant-garde. A beacon of modernist architecture, it is renowned for its stone flooring and exterior staircase leading to an expansive terrace. The residence’s sculptural physicality and situational vibrancy extends to its furniture, which Malaparte also designed.

In 2019, Tommaso Rositani Suckert, Malaparte’s youngest descendant, began making reproductions of these items. The console, console table, and desk on view in Paris are produced from the same materials – glass, tuff stone, and walnut – as the originals in Capri and, like Malaparte before him, Rositani Suckert sourced the finest local materials and artisans for their production.