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Artist: MOODY, Ronald Clive (British sculptor and writer of Jamaican birth. Born into a prominent professional family, he arrived in England in 1923, reluctantly to study dentistry. Alongside his studies he read voraciously in the metaphysics of India and China, which had a lasting influence on his thinking. A chance encounter with the Egyptian sculpture at the British Museum, London, so profoundly affected him with their 'tremendous inner force [and] irresistible movement in stillness' that Moody decided to become a sculptor. Self-taught, by the time he qualified in dentistry in 1930 he was already proficient. His first work in wood, Wohin (1934; Sacramento, CA, Adolf Loeb priv. co.), followed by Johanaan (1935; London, Tate), began a period of intense creativity that resulted in his moving to Paris in 1938, where two richly productive years brought growing recognition. Moody was forced to flee the city in 1940, two days before it fell to the Germans, abandoning his sculptures. (These pieces were retrieved after the war, along with twelve sculptures that had been sent to the US in 1938 for exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art and elsewhere.) After escaping over the Pyrenees into Spain, Moody arrived back in England in October 1941. Moody's experiences in France and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima deeply affected him, and much of his subsequent work concerned the dichotomy between man's potential for self-destruction and for spiritual evolution. Three Heads (wood, 1946), the only modern piece in Jawajarlal Nehru's collection of classical Buddhist figures, was the first of many symbolic sculptures that mirrored his growing alarm; the extent of his despair was given form in Time Hiroshima (wood, 1977; Vienna, Kurt Oberhuber priv. col.) Following his 1946 one-man show at the Arcade Gallery, London, which included his portrait head Harold Moody (plaster, 1946; London N. P. G.), Moody contracted tuberculosis, which limited his ability to work and forced him to cancel exhibitions. While convalescing he scripted a series of radio talks on the history of art and wrote short stories. He continued to write articles and reviews until the late 1970s. In the late 1950s Moody began experimenting with concrete, stimulated by the new techniques it demanded and the textural effects he was able to achieve; The Mother (1958; see Caribbean islands, fig. 5) is his best known work in this medium. He abandoned concrete a few years later, when he was commissioned to sculpt Savacou (cast aluminium, h. 2.13 m, 1964), the 'proud, invincible' symbolic bird based on the form of a parrot, which stands on the campus of the University of the West Indies, Kingston. He then began exploring the textural potential of metallic resins in various works, including portraits. Although wary of political or social activism, Moody became involved with the Société Africaine de Culture in Paris and served on the London Committee for the Second Conference of Negro Writers and Artists (Rome, 1959). In 1967 he became a member of the Caribbean Artists Movement, actively participating in their many exhibitions and symposia, and he served as chairman of the UK Visual Arts Sub-Committee for the Festival of Art and Culture '77 in Lagos, Nigeria. He served on the Council of the Society of Portraits Sculptors in London and in 1977 was awarded the Musgrave Gold Medal, Jamaica's most prestigious cultural award; the following year he received the Jamaica Institute Centenary Medal for contributions to art.)