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Henry Moore Artwork Catalogue

Four Standing Figures and One Reclining Figure

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Four Standing Figures and One Reclining Figure
Four Standing Figures and One Reclining Figure
Four Standing Figures and One Reclining Figure

Four Standing Figures and One Reclining Figure

Date1945-46
Artwork TypeTextile Summary
Catalogue NumberTEX 13
Mediaserigraphy
Papersilk
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By the end of the Second World War Moore was paradoxically championed by Herbert Read as a pioneer of Modernism whilst being revered by Kenneth Clark as the leading British artist  able to connect the past with the present. This continuity may be seen here in Moore’s fundamentally humanist approach, re-examining the classicism of Ancient Greece in his use of drapery as well as figures standing in rows   resembling the Caryatids of the Acropolis. Identification with Greece is further reinforced by the colour scheme of grey or blue and white.

But the figures look forwards as well as back – the standing figures anticipate Moore’s sculptural exploration of this theme in the early 1950s, while the reclining figure bears a strong resemblance to that of his initial maquette (LH 292b), which ultimately led to the revolutionary bronze Reclining Figure: Festival (LH 293) for the 1951 Festival of Britain. It was, Moore proclaimed, the first sculpture which was successfully opened out so that the spaces between the forms were of equal importance to the forms themselves. 
ExhibitionsPublished References