Moore created several works on the theme of internal/external forms, declaring it one of his favourite subjects. At a formal level, it offered the perfect opportunity to explore sculptural relationships, generating visual excitement by presenting one form through another. For Moore, the subject was also closely connected to a metaphor of protection and containment that he associated with his other great theme, the mother and child. Large Interior Form started life as the ‘interior form’ in a larger piece, Large Upright Internal/External Form of the same year. As he did frequently, Moore took a part of an existing work and used it as the starting point to develop a new sculptural idea. The inclusion of large holes emphasises organic three-dimensionality, and it is said to have been inspired by pebbles that he had found by the sea. The twisting and asymmetry of the upright form is reminiscent of the contrapposto of classical sculpture, an echo perhaps of the great influence that Renaissance art had on Moore throughout his career.

When the architect Walter Gropius asked Moore to make a sculpture for a new school, the work was not completed until after the Second World War, when it was installed at the Barclay School in Stevenage, England. Family Group was Moore’s first life-sized sculpture to be cast in bronze. In the post-war period, as a surge of rebuilding took hold of Britain, Moore was asked to make numerous public sculptures. He made the human figure central to many of these works to counter the dehumanising effects of war. This sculpture portrays an idealised nuclear family, and it is said to have been inspired by the birth of the artist’s only daughter, Mary, in 1946. The two adults mirror one another while the child forms a central knot binding them together and unifying the composition.