Henry Moore

Ernest Brown & Phillips (The Leicester Galleries), London
Acquired from the above in 1961

Alan Bowness & Herbert Read, eds., Henry Moore Sculpture and Drawings 1955-64, vol. 4, London, 1965, no. 441, illustration of another cast p. 38
William Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, illustration of another cast p. 189
Herbert Read, Henry Moore, A Study of his Life and Work, New York, 1965, illustration of another cast pl. 203
Ionel Jianou, Henry Moore, Paris, 1968, illustration of another cast pl. 69
Robert Melville, Henry Moore, Sculptures and Drawings 1921-1969, London, 1970, no. 572, illustration of another cast
Giulio Carlo Argan, Henry Moore Sculpture, London, 1981, no. 235, illustration of another cast p. 151
Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings 1955-64, vol. 3, London, 1986, no. 441, illustrations of another cast p. 38 & pl. 75

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Moore’s 1950s oeuvre testifies to the artist’s fascination with the challenge of relating the figure to its architectural surroundings. Receiving commissions for large, site specific sculptures, Moore drew inspiration for each of the resulting series of Upright Motives from the setting itself. Of one of these commissions, intended for the courtyard of a new building in Milan, Italy, he recalled: “I visited the site and a lone Lombard poplar growing behind the building convinced me that a vertical work would act as the correct counterfoil to the horizontal rhythm of the building” (quoted in David Mitchinson, Henry Moore, With comments by the artist, London, 1981, p. 134).  Moore explored this relationship between figure and ground at length, producing about a dozen sculptures on a smaller scale, including Three Motives Against Wall No. 1, which juxtapose amorphous figures against a flat architectural backdrop.

The organic forms of Three Motives Against Wall No. 1 appear both archetypal and full of symbolism but also enigmatic and indecipherable. Almost human in their form yet strangely alien, the figures in this maquette, along with the totemic structures that populate the entire Upright Motives series, have immense emotional and intellectual resonance. In the catalogue for a 1962 exhibition of Henry Moore’s new work at M. Knoedler & Co. in New York, John Russell writes of the psychological power of the series: “[Moore has the] ability to draw upon the limitless repertory of images which lies stored-up in the unconscious mind of every one of us. At a time for instance, when anthropology and the analysis of dreams have alike had much to offer to the student of our race, the ‘Upright Motives’ of 1955-56 speak to us at many levels of consciousness and thrust down towards recollections as yet undredged from the deeps of memory" (Henry Moore (exhibition catalogue), M. Knoedler & Co. Inc., New York, 1962).