Online publications

When the sculptor understands his material, has a knowledge of its possibilities and its constructive build, it is possible to keep within its limitations and yet turn an inert block into a composition conceived in their air-surrounded entirety, stressing and straining, thrusting and opposing each other in spatial relationship, - being static, in the sense that the centre of gravity lies within the base (and does not seem to be falling over or moving off its base) – and yet having an alert dynamic tension between its parts. 1 So wrote Henry Moore in 1933 in his contribution to the Unit One 'manifesto' edited by Herbert Read. Moore could have been specifically writing about Figure, 1932. This exceptionally rare beechwood carving has an ever- changing composition as it rotates, creating a tension between the form and the material, Moore tantalisingly responding to the grain of the wood in the composition, revealing an abstracted figurative form. During the early 1930's, Henry Moore's carvings marked a pivotal moment in the evolution of modern British Sculpture. Moore embraced direct carving and 'truth to material'. Wood, with its visible grain and warmth, was an ideal, tactile medium. He drew inspiration from primitivism and non-Western sculpture, creating in response a sculptural vocabulary of simplified forms and a focus on internal structure rather than surface detail. Figure is one of only twenty wood carvings Moore created before the Second World War. He worked more frequently in stone and marble during this period, and later, in bronze. Wood carvings are among his rarest works. Many are held in museums and public institutions, and in the four decades that Osborne Samuel has specialised in Moore's work, this is only the third wood carving we have handled. 1 Unit One: The Modern Movement in English Architecture, Painting and Sculpture, edited by Herbert Read, taken from Henry Moore, Writings and Conversations, edited by Alan Wilinson, published by Lund Humphries, 2002, p. 191 66

• Cover