Background
Moody was born Ronald Clive Moody in 1900 in Kingston, Jamaica, into a well-off professional family.
Moody was born Ronald Clive Moody in 1900 in Kingston, Jamaica, into a well-off professional family.
He attended Calabar College, Jamaica, moving to London in 1923 to study dentistry at King"s College London, obtaining his degree in 1930.
His work features in prestigious collections including the National Portrait Gallery, London and Tate Britain, as well as the National Gallery of Jamaica. In London, he was inspired by the British Museum"s collection of non-Western art and decided to become a sculptor. Early experiments with clay led him to teach himself how to carve.
He produced his first carved figure in oak wood.
Entitled Wohin (meaning in German “where to?”, the name of a song by Schubert), that sculpture was bought by Marie Seton in 1935. Among his most famous works from this period was his great female head, Midonz (1937).
By the late 1930s, Moody had accumulated an impressive collection of work and had a solo show in Paris. The success of the show encouraged him to move to Paris in 1938.
That year, twelve major sculptures were sent to the Harmon Foundation in the United States to be included in exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Artist
His success in France was cut short by the onset of the Second World War. In 1940, two days before Paris fell to the Germans, Moody was forced to flee the city, abandoning his sculptures. (They were retrieved after the war, along with 12 works that had been sent to the United States for exhibition)
After having escaped from Paris, Moody travelled through occupied France, across the Pyrenees into Spain, and eventually arrived back in England in October 1941.
Moody"s Paris success followed him to London, where he resumed his work after the war and had a one-man show in May 1946 at the Arcade Gallery, off Bond Street.
From 1950 until the early 1960s regular London exhibitions brought Ronald Moody a growing presence on the British art scene. In 1964 he created a sculpture called Savacou for the University of the West Indies.
He died in London in 1984. In 2000 the first substantial exhibition of his work took place at the National Gallery of Jamaica.
Moody crater on Mercury was named after him in November 2008.