‘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 bea 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 sharplyangled element that surges vertically skyward and a more grounded, voluminous form. In the earlier work, the landscape-figuremetaphor 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 negativespace 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 ofthe 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), whowas 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-AirMuseum and the other another at the ITOCHU Headquarters in Tokyo. Another cast is located outside the Palais de la Musique etdes Congrès in Strasbourg, France.