Henry Moore Artwork Catalogue
Draped Reclining Figure
Draped Reclining Figure
Henry Moore’s lifelong fascination with the reclining figure was
sparked by a chance discovery he made in Zwemmer’s bookshop on London’s Charing
Cross Road in 1922. Browsing the publications, he saw a small reproduction of
a Chacmool, a Mesoamerican sculpture depicting a reclining figure, supported
on its elbows, with its head turned and gaze directed over its shoulder.
Moore was immediately struck by the figure’s pose, both still and alert, and
he began to explore it in sketches and sculpture. The subject proved
liberating and inexhaustible, freeing Moore to experiment with endless
variations.
‘I have tried in this figure to use drapery from what I think is a sculptural point of view. Drapery played a very important part in the shelter drawings … and what I began to learn then about its function as form gave me the intention, sometime or other, to use drapery in sculpture in a more realistic way than I had ever tried to use it in my carved sculpture…Drapery can emphasise the tension in a figure, for where the form pushes outwards, such as the shoulders, the thighs, the breasts, etc., it can be pulled tight across the form (almost like a bandage), and by contrast with the crumpled slackness of the drapery which lies between the salient points, the pressure from inside is intensified.’[1]
The cast of Draped Reclining Figure destined for the Time-Life Building, was sited on the roof terrace behind Time/Life Screen 1952-53 (LH 344); an abstract relief carved in Portland stone which forms an integral part of the building. |
[1] Henry Moore quoted in Sculpture in the Open Air: A Talk by Henry Moore on his Sculpture and its Placing in Open-Air Sites, edited by Robert Melville and recorded by the British Council 1955; typescript copy in The Henry Moore Foundation Archive, Perry Green.