Ronald Moody, from Primitive to Black British

“Ronald Moody, from Primitive to Black British” offers the first thorough, academic account of this British sculptor’s career, work, and evolving ideology as he negotiated more than fifty years in the British and European art worlds. This research suggests that although Moody’s sculpture was—like that of so many artists of this generation—influenced by the experience of world war, European modernism, and decolonization, his reception by critics was dictated by the racial and imperial politics of the day. Whether he was exoticized as an exponent of Jamaican primitivism, praised as a Commonwealth artist, or hailed as a pioneer of Black British visual art, Moody’s dedication to universalism ranked him among the modernists of British sculpture.