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Lot Essay
“Eventually, I found that form and space are one and the same thing. You can’t understand space without understanding form” (H. Moore, quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations, Berkeley, 2002, p. 206).
Conceived in 1969 and cast in smooth bronze, completely devoid of surface tooling or texture, Architectural Project has an almost fluid quality to its sinuous curves, as if it may dissolve and morph into another shape at any moment. Henry Moore was at the height of his international fame during this period, having experienced an incredible surge in public commissions following the end of the Second World War. The scale and breadth of these projects, their disparate locations and architectural surroundings, challenged the artist to push the boundaries of his artistic vision and become increasingly inventive in his approach to form. As a result, Moore’s work from the 1960s is typically marked by boldly dynamic volumes and shapes, intriguing visual dialogues and a daring play of mass and void, characteristics embodied by the present work.
In contrast to Moore's figurative, pierced or interlocking forms, the Architectural Project belongs to a body of works that can be referred to as compact forms. Although dense in mass, there is an overall sense of internal movement and recoiled tension, emphasized by the inclusion of a points, which became a prominent feature of Moore's later works. As Moore himself stated, “A form becomes more active when it is a point – it has a direction.” Here, the bulging curvaceous forms that make up the mass of the sculpture suggest different interpretations from different angles, and allow for different positionings.
As he wrote in 1964, a few years before the present work was executed, “One of the things I would like to think my sculpture has is a force, is a strength, is a life, a vitality from inside it, so that you have a sense that the form is pressing from inside, trying to burst or give off strength from inside itself, rather than having something which is just shaped from outside and is stopped. It is as though you have something trying to make itself come to a shape from inside itself” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., op. cit., pp. 198-199).
Conceived in 1969 and cast in smooth bronze, completely devoid of surface tooling or texture, Architectural Project has an almost fluid quality to its sinuous curves, as if it may dissolve and morph into another shape at any moment. Henry Moore was at the height of his international fame during this period, having experienced an incredible surge in public commissions following the end of the Second World War. The scale and breadth of these projects, their disparate locations and architectural surroundings, challenged the artist to push the boundaries of his artistic vision and become increasingly inventive in his approach to form. As a result, Moore’s work from the 1960s is typically marked by boldly dynamic volumes and shapes, intriguing visual dialogues and a daring play of mass and void, characteristics embodied by the present work.
In contrast to Moore's figurative, pierced or interlocking forms, the Architectural Project belongs to a body of works that can be referred to as compact forms. Although dense in mass, there is an overall sense of internal movement and recoiled tension, emphasized by the inclusion of a points, which became a prominent feature of Moore's later works. As Moore himself stated, “A form becomes more active when it is a point – it has a direction.” Here, the bulging curvaceous forms that make up the mass of the sculpture suggest different interpretations from different angles, and allow for different positionings.
As he wrote in 1964, a few years before the present work was executed, “One of the things I would like to think my sculpture has is a force, is a strength, is a life, a vitality from inside it, so that you have a sense that the form is pressing from inside, trying to burst or give off strength from inside itself, rather than having something which is just shaped from outside and is stopped. It is as though you have something trying to make itself come to a shape from inside itself” (quoted in A. Wilkinson, ed., op. cit., pp. 198-199).