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Lot Essay
Throughout his career, Henry Moore had what he described as “an absolute obsession” with the reclining figure. More than any other, this subject, rich with art historical precedent, provided Moore with an inexhaustible range of formal and expressive possibilities, serving as a site of endless experimentation and innovation, and allowing him to explore the equivalence between figuration and abstraction, the landscape and the human form. “The subject matter is given,” he explained of his continual return to this motif. “It’s settled for you, and you know it and like it, so that within it, within the subject that you’ve done a dozen times before, you are free to invent a completely new form-idea” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Aldershot, 2002, p. 212).
Leaning upon her right elbow, with her head upturned and alert, Reclining Figure No. 2 of 1952 belongs to a series of six closely related works of this type—each of which feature a similarly reclining figure—that Moore created between 1952 and 1954. Form and space coalesce in the abstracted and hollowed forms of the present work, the undulating twist of the figure’s torso and hips exaggerated to create a palpable sense of tension, force and vitality that defines the greatest of Moore’s sculptures from this post-war period. Reclining Figure No. 2 is one of an edition of seven, of which other casts reside in The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba, Canada. The plaster is held in the Henry Moore Foundation Collection.
After the Second World War, Moore made a radical breakthrough in his artistic conception of the reclining figure. The monumental Reclining Figure: Festival—a precedent for the present work—was conceived in 1951. The Arts Council of Great Britain had commissioned Moore to create a work to be exhibited at the Festival of Britain held in the summer of the same year. In contrast to the recumbent, rounded forms of Moore’s figures of the 1930s and 1940s, this figure was reduced to its most elemental parts, a skeletal structure that resonates with an inner strength and vitality. The torso of the figure is hollowed away, creating a dynamic interplay between form and space. Moore would later meditate on this incorporation of negative space into the sculpture itself, stating, “[Reclining Figure: Festival] was perhaps my first conscious effort to make space and form absolutely inseparable. I became curious of this aim halfway through the sculpture… I think this is the first sculpture in which I succeeded in making form and space sculpturally inseparable” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ibid, p. 276).
Moore continued to investigate this sculptural breakthrough, and the relationship between form and space is further explored in Reclining Figure No. 2. The figure’s torso and hips are projected forward, contorted and carved away creating a space between the plinth and the figure. Similarly, cavities are formed between the taut right-angled elbow, the legs and stiffly bent knees. This symbiotic relationship between form and space was one of Moore’s central and most enduring sculptural innovations, offering infinite views through and around the sculpture; Moore later stated that, “You can’t understand space without being able to understand form and to understand form you must be able to understand space” (quoted in C. Lichtenstern, Henry Moore: Work-Theory-Impact, London, 2008, p. 105).
The simplified organic structure of Reclining Figure No. 2 demonstrates Moore’s interest in the joints, bones and fissures of the human form and how these interconnected structures instigate movement and rotation. Stripped down to its most essential structure, the chiseled parts of the figure take on an organic vitality and energy, as if it could leap into action at any time, presenting a new, highly charged form of humanity. In the context of post-war Britain, these skeletal reclining figures were seen as both a reflection of the anxiety and tension wrought by years of war, and conversely, regarded as a presentation of human strength, offering hope to a fatigued and war-torn country and its people.
Leaning upon her right elbow, with her head upturned and alert, Reclining Figure No. 2 of 1952 belongs to a series of six closely related works of this type—each of which feature a similarly reclining figure—that Moore created between 1952 and 1954. Form and space coalesce in the abstracted and hollowed forms of the present work, the undulating twist of the figure’s torso and hips exaggerated to create a palpable sense of tension, force and vitality that defines the greatest of Moore’s sculptures from this post-war period. Reclining Figure No. 2 is one of an edition of seven, of which other casts reside in The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba, Canada. The plaster is held in the Henry Moore Foundation Collection.
After the Second World War, Moore made a radical breakthrough in his artistic conception of the reclining figure. The monumental Reclining Figure: Festival—a precedent for the present work—was conceived in 1951. The Arts Council of Great Britain had commissioned Moore to create a work to be exhibited at the Festival of Britain held in the summer of the same year. In contrast to the recumbent, rounded forms of Moore’s figures of the 1930s and 1940s, this figure was reduced to its most elemental parts, a skeletal structure that resonates with an inner strength and vitality. The torso of the figure is hollowed away, creating a dynamic interplay between form and space. Moore would later meditate on this incorporation of negative space into the sculpture itself, stating, “[Reclining Figure: Festival] was perhaps my first conscious effort to make space and form absolutely inseparable. I became curious of this aim halfway through the sculpture… I think this is the first sculpture in which I succeeded in making form and space sculpturally inseparable” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ibid, p. 276).
Moore continued to investigate this sculptural breakthrough, and the relationship between form and space is further explored in Reclining Figure No. 2. The figure’s torso and hips are projected forward, contorted and carved away creating a space between the plinth and the figure. Similarly, cavities are formed between the taut right-angled elbow, the legs and stiffly bent knees. This symbiotic relationship between form and space was one of Moore’s central and most enduring sculptural innovations, offering infinite views through and around the sculpture; Moore later stated that, “You can’t understand space without being able to understand form and to understand form you must be able to understand space” (quoted in C. Lichtenstern, Henry Moore: Work-Theory-Impact, London, 2008, p. 105).
The simplified organic structure of Reclining Figure No. 2 demonstrates Moore’s interest in the joints, bones and fissures of the human form and how these interconnected structures instigate movement and rotation. Stripped down to its most essential structure, the chiseled parts of the figure take on an organic vitality and energy, as if it could leap into action at any time, presenting a new, highly charged form of humanity. In the context of post-war Britain, these skeletal reclining figures were seen as both a reflection of the anxiety and tension wrought by years of war, and conversely, regarded as a presentation of human strength, offering hope to a fatigued and war-torn country and its people.