亨利∙摩爾

Umberto Erculiani, Lucerne
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1984

Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore Sculpture and Drawings, 1955-64, London, 1986, vol. III, no. 491a, illustration of another cast p. 58; illustrations of another cast pls. 130-131
David Mitchinson et al., Celebrating Moore, Works from the Collection of the Henry Moore Foundation, London, 1998, no. 198, illustration of another cast p. 272

There is some mild wear to the patina consistent with age. Apart from some very small areas of verdigris in the crevises and minor surface dirt, this work is in excellent condition.
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Working Model for Stone Memorial is an impressive and important example of Moore's organically abstract sculpture. Moore explained: 'Sculpture, for me, must have life in it, vitality. It must have a feeling for organic form, a certain pathos and warmth. Purely abstract sculpture seems to me to be an activity that would be better fulfilled in another art, such as architecture. That is why I have never been tempted to remain a purely abstract sculptor [...]. A sculpture must have its own life. Rather than give the impression of a smaller object carved out of a bigger block, it should make the observer feel that what he is seeing contains within itself its own organic energy thrusting outwards- if a work of sculpture has its own life and form, it will be alive and expansive, seeming larger than the stone or wood from which it is carved. It should always give the impression, whether carved or modelled, of having grown organically, created by pressure from within' (quoted in Henry Moore: Sculptures, Drawings, Graphic 1921-1981 (exhibition catalogue), Palacio de Velázquez, Madrid, 1981, p. 49).

The present work is one of the earliest sculptures that Moore used to explore locking and interlocking forms which reached their apogee in the Locking Piece completed a few years later (fig. 1). Writing in 1971 Giulio Carlo Argan suggests that 'the most recent of the artist's work, is characterised by the recurrence of disjointed and reassembled forms; indeed the forms embed and interpenetrate each other. The protuberance of one body enters the gauged cavities of the other, filling them. The unity of the single block is thus reconstructed, but through a contested integration of positive and negative. The unified iconic components can be easily recognised in this morphology based on the fitting together of parts: The organic motif of sex and fertility, and the mechanistic motif of the integrated block, of gears, of valves' (G. C. Argan, Henry Moore, New York, 1971).

Discussing the present work, William Packer writes: 'This nominally working model clearly stands as an autonomous and authentic work of art in its own right; and it brings together a complex of responses, almost as though it were a compendium or digest of Moore's work as a whole. Cast in bronze, it is yet a monument to his practice as a carver, with the gauging and hatchings of the rasp upon the raw plaster in clear evidence of the processes by which the form and image were realised' (W. Packer in D. Mitchinson et al., op. cit., p. 272). Moore passionately believed in the importance of the material and as Packer describes the richly marked surface of Working Model for Stone Memorial is a testament to his technical virtuosity as a carver and deep understanding of the casting of bronzes. Working Model for Stone Memorial carries a suggestion of overwhelming density, an architectural immovability that make it 'a perfect example of Moore's own dictum, that a true sculpture establishes its own scale, and may register in the imagination at any scale whatsoever... Others may be larger and heavier, but there is no work of Moore's that is more truly massive and in its essential self, more monumental' (W. Packer in ibid., p. 272).

This sculpture was a fully conceived working model for a monumental stone carving made out of travertine marble which belongs to the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. (fig. 2). This important model was subsequently cast in bronze and there are various casts in public institutions, such as The Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green; Kunstmuseum Winterthur; Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster; Academy of Arts, Honolulu and the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere.

Fig. 1, Henry Moore, Working Model for Locking Piece, 1962, bronze, Stiftung Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum - Zentrum Internationaler Skulptur, Duisburg

Fig. 2, Henry Moore, Stone Memorial, 1961-69, Travertine marble, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Fig. 3, Henry Moore in his studio