HENRY MOORE (1898-1986)


Upright Motive C inscribed, numbered and stamped with the foundry mark 'Moore 6/9 Noack Berlin' (on the base)bronze11 3/4 in (29.8 cm) (height)Conceived and cast in 1968
|This work is recorded in the archives of the Henry Moore Foundation under no. LH 588.ProvenanceMarina & Willy Staehelin-Peyer, Zurich.Private collection, Zurich (by descent from the above).Private collection, Pennsylvania (acquired from the above in February 2016).LiteratureA. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, 1964-73, London, 1977, vol. IV, no. 588 (illustration of another cast p. 53).In 1967 Henry Moore purchased additional land at the rear of his home at Much Hadham in Hertfordshire, England, providing the artist with verdant, open ground on which he could have a personal exploration of his sculptures in unperturbed spaces. The land, however, came with aesthetically unpleasant components, and to hide less desirable patches of the land, Moore bulldozed a former gravel and clay pyramid to create a synthetic hill. This hill provided Moore with an opportunity for personal experimentation and to situate his sculpture against he open sky, to "contrast form with its opposite—space" (the artist quoted in A. Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Sculpture and Drawings, 1964-73, London, 1977, vol. IV, p. 14).The contrived hill at Much Hadham became a testing ground for Moore's sculpture, and his first instinct for the space was to create Upright Motives akin to those he created in 1955-56 that were given to the park connected to the Kröller-Müller Museum in Holland. The present work, Upright Motive C, was the third sculpture created for his bespoke series Upright Motives A-E of 1968 for his personal property. Upright Motive C was cast in a numbered edition of nine plus one artist's proof.