Skip to main content

Henry Moore Artwork Catalogue

Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut

Skip to main content
photo: Hannah Higham 2020
Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut
photo: Hannah Higham 2020
photo: Hannah Higham 2020

Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut

Date1979-81
Artwork TypeSculpture
Catalogue NumberLH 758 cast 0
Mediabronze
Dimensionsartwork (including base): 399 × 470 × 225 cm
Signature

unsigned, [0/3]

OwnershipThe Henry Moore Foundation: acquired 1986
More Information

Henry Moore began experimenting with breaking his reclining figures into two and three parts, albeit on a small scale, as early as 1934. By 1959, he was creating monumental figures composed of two or three parts and the negative spaces between them. In breaking down the boundaries of the human form, he united body and landscape in an indivisible whole:

 

 ‘I realised what an advantage a separated two-piece composition could have in relating figures to landscape. […] Knees and breasts are mountains. Once these parts become separated you don’t expect it to be a naturalistic figure; therefore, you can justifiably make it like a landscape or a rock.’[1]

 

Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut

is closely related to a work made nearly twenty years earlier for the Lincoln Center in New York (Reclining Figure 1963-65, LH 519). Both works are divided into two parts: a sharply angled element that surges vertically skyward and a more grounded, voluminous form. In the earlier work, the landscape-figure metaphor is evident in the heavily textured, boulder-like forms. In Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut, the smooth and sinuous forms are less overtly organic, but the abrupt slice of negative space between them – flooded by the view beyond – serves to unite figure and landscape. The cut-out ‘eye’ in the raised head of the figure serves a similar function, both looking out and providing a window that we can look through.

Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut exists in four scales. The original maquette (LH 755), just 20 cm in length, was subsequently enlarged to 30 cm and retitled Architecture Prize (LH 756). The entire edition of the larger maquette was purchased by the Hyatt Foundation in Illinois, as awards for winners of the Pritzker Architecture Prize – an honour for architects whose work consistently and significantly contributes to humanity and the built environment.[2]

The first recipient in 1979 was Philip Johnson (1906-2005), who was a friend of Moore’s. Subsequent recipients include Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Gordon Bunshaft and I.M. Pei. A working model size, almost 100 cm long, was made soon after the prize edition was cast. In 1981, at the age of eighty-three, Moore completed this monumental version, just under 5 metres in length.

Two casts of this work are in Japan: one at the Hakone Open-Air Museum and the other another at the ITOCHU Headquarters in Tokyo. Another cast is located outside the Palais de la Musique et des Congrès in Strasbourg, France.



[1] Carlton Lake, ‘Henry Moore’s World’, Atlantic Monthly, Boston, January 1962, p.44.

[2] The prize was established by the Pritzker family of Chicago through their Hyatt Foundation in 1979.

Exhibitions
Exhibitions
Published References