Ronald C. Moody
Midonz (Goddess of Transmutation) 1937
Elm, 72 x 38 x 44.5 cm
The Artist's Collection, courtesy of Cynthia Moody
© Cynthia Moody

Ronald Moody
(1900-1984)

Ronald Moody was born in Jamaica and moved to London in 1923 to study at Kings College. By the late 1930s Moody had accumulated an impressive collection of work and had a solo show in Paris (where he lived until 1940). In 1938 twelve major sculptures were sent to the Harmon Foundation, USA to be included in exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Art.

"....Midonz had been sent to Paris soon after completion for the artist's solo show at the Galerie Billiet-Vorms in November 1937 and its sequel at the Kunstzaal van Lier, Amsterdam, the following January. It had returned to Paris and, shortly after being shown at the Salon des Tuileries in June 1938, was shipped, together with eleven other works, to the Harmon Foundation for inclusion in the Contemporary Negro Art exhibition....Midonz, together with Wohin (1935) and Tacet (1938), form the trinity of heroic heads created by the artist during the first burgeoning of his art, in the early 1930s. They are closely interconnected. Manifest in each is the artist's passionate concern with the exploration of the inner life of Man and the possibility of evolution through self awareness. In each he...captured an extraordinary sense of spiritual unity."

Cythnia Moody, Midonz, la Déese de la Transmutation, 1996