Henry Moore (1898-1986)

In the early 1960s, Moore combined his interest in the abstract female form with the use of bones as the basis of his sculpture. He spoke about the centrality of bones in the monumental version of Seated Woman: Thin Neck: “There are many structural and sculptural principles to be learnt from bones, e.g. that in spite of their lightness they have great strength. Some bones, such as the breast bones of birds, have the lightweight fineness of a knife-edge. Finding such a bone led to my using this knife-edge thinness in 1961 in a sculpture Seated Woman: Thin Neck. In this figure the thin neck and head by contrast with the width and bulk of the body, gives more monumentality to the work" (quoted in R. Melville, op. cit., pp. 261-262).