Henry Moore

Pieter Coray, Lugano

PaceWildenstein, New York (acquired from the above in May 1996)

Acquired from the above on May 31, 1996

Los Angeles, PaceWildenstein, Henry Moore, Monumental Sculpture, 1995

Alan Bowness, ed., Henry Moore Sculpture and Drawings, Volume 3, Sculpture 1955-64, London, 1965, no. 514, illustration of another cast pls. 171-172

Philip James, Henry Moore on Sculpture, New York, 1966, illustration of another cast pp. 144 & 145

Ionel Jianou, Henry Moore, Paris, 1968, no. 30

David Sylvester, Henry Moore, London, 1968, no. 126, illustration of another cast pl. 129

Robert Melville, Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, London, 1970, no. 676, illustration of another cast p. 298

David Finn, Sculpture and Environment, London, 1977, illustrations of another cast

Geoffrey Shakerley, Henry Moore: Sculptures in landscape, London, 1978, illustration of another cast pl. 40

Alan Bowness & Herbert Reed (ed.), Henry Moore, Complete Sculpture 1955-1964, vol. 3, London, 1986, no. 514, illustration of another cast p. 60 and 160-3

Doreen Ehrlich, Henry Moore, London, 1994, illustration of another cast p. 75

John Hedgecoe, A Monumental Vision, The Sculpture of Henry Moore, New York, 1998, illustrations of another cast pp. 168 - 169

Very good condition. The bronze features a mottled green patina and is structurally sound.
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The present sculpture is the working model size of Moore's technically sophisticated form, Locking Piece. Like the monumental version of the form, the present sculpture presents the viewer with an interactive experience, encouraging an investigative exportation of the piece in the round. In conversation with his biographer Alan Wilkinson around 1980, Moore explained the origins of this fascinating sculpture, which he created in the early 1960s.  "At one time I was playing with a couple of pebbles that I’d picked up, because behind my far field is a gravel pit and there are thousands of shapes and forms and one only has to go out there and I can find twenty new little ideas if I wish, immediately. Anyhow, I was playing with two pebbles which I found like that and somehow or other they got locked together and I couldn’t get them undone and I wondered how they got into position and it was like a clenched fist being tightly … Anyhow, eventually I did get it to [separate]; by turning and lifting, one piece came off the other. This gave one the idea of making two forms which would do that and later I called it ‘Locking Piece’ because they lock together." 

Moore discussed this work in detail, explaining that "Locking Piece is certainly the largest and perhaps the most successful of my ‘fitting-together’ sculptures. In fact the two pieces interlock in such a way that they can only be separated if the top piece is lifted and turned at the same time…The germ of the idea originated from a sawed fragment of bone with a socket and joint which was found in the garden. Given this theme, I made the complete sculpture" (Henry Moore quoted in John Hedgecoe and Henry Moore, Henry Moore, London, 1968, p. 455-455). In a later publication he elaborated on this, saying that "When I made it , I was reminded of puzzles I played with as a child in which there were pieces that fitted together but were more difficult to take apart. To make two parts fit you had to put them together in a certain way and then turn them so they would lock. That is why it is called Locking Piece. You see different shapes as you go around the sculpture. This is the result of trying to make a sculpture have a lot of variety even though it has the same unity throughout. Unity in a work is easily achieved if all the forms are repetitious and the same. Also, it is easy to create variety if all the forms are consciously different. What is difficult is unity" (Henry Moore, Henry Moore, Sculpture and Environment, London, 1977, p. 220).

The complexities of the sculpture bestow it with enduring appeal. This is in part due to the organic fidelity, a fitting tribute to the triumph of natural design. The surface of the work is hugely diverse, scraping and scarring like the cliff-faces of Whitby bay, and as smooth and satisfying as fresh horse-chestnut. Moore fills his work with emotional and experience based references using his technical virtuosity to blend aesthetic beauty and emotional intensity. William Packer writes that "Locking Piece is rich in all such associations and suggestions, formal quite as much as imaginative. It has the massive monumentality of a mill, fraught with that sense of the imminent, heavy horizontal turn. It has the domed form of a skull, that seems to clip and hinge together, jaw and cranium…It is manifestly a carved piece for all that it is cast in bronze, the surface scored, rasped and smoother in the original plaster to match the long wearing of the natural form, whether by nature or man’s own hand and use. This is the essential character of the whole of the work, and the whole of the man" (David Mitchinson et al., Celebrating Moore: Works from The Henry Moore Foundation, London, 1998, p. 277).

According to the Henry Moore Fondation, the present bronze is from an edition of 9 plus one artist's proof.  Other casts from the edition are in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens; The Munson-Williams Proctor Art Institute, Utica and the National Museum of Romania in Bucharest. Moore's original plaster for this sculpture is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto.