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Henry Moore 1898 - 1986 Reclining figures, 1931 Signed and dated Pen brush and ink, chalk, and wash on paper laid down on board 15 x 11 in, 38.1 x 27.9 cm Provenance J.H. Reiseger, UK Hanover Gallery, London Helen Tarr, USA Private collection, Switzerland Literature Garrould, Ann ed. 'Henry Moore, Complete Drawings'. Henry Moore Foundation, Lund Humphries, 2003, vol. 2, HMF 994, AG 33.14, p. 86, ill. Reclining Figures, 1931 demonstrates Moore's relationship with the Surrealist group during the 1930s. As with Leger's Composition and the notion of 'objects in space', the sculptural forms float freely across the page, and the shadows depicted by the ink wash work as forms in their own right rather than being visually literal. Moore was to take the lessons learnt in Paris from the Surrealists – Miró and Breton in particular – and channel it into his work of the 1930s. Many consider Moore's works from the 1930s to be the most important of his entire oeuvre. During this time he created work of tremendous originality and vision, which Tate curator Chris Stephens has described as "darker, edgier and more complex than the familiar Moore". The decade culminated in an exceptional group of unique lead pieces produced at his Kent studio between 1938 and 1939. In this drawing the simplified forms with phallic-like heads, one of which is pierced with a single hole or eye, seem to anticipate the Corsehill stone 'Reclining Figure'. The arrangement of the model's heavy limbs and undulating curves show an important connection between woman and the landscape. Such forceful representations of the human body are not only feminine but, as with both Miró and Picasso, distinctly primeval. His close observation of ancient sculpture, drawn from the collections of Mexican, Oceanic and African artefacts at the British Museum, emerges in the fluid lines of this early study. These gestural marks channel a unique energy which the art historian Julian Stallabrass has likened to "the stirring of primitive magma beneath the crust of civilization".