Henry Moore Artwork Catalogue
Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut
Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut
unsigned, [0/3]
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.
