Lot Essay
Moore made the maquette of the present work from a bone which he worked up extensively in clay, adding the vestigial head and arms, and the drapery-like elaboration of the torso. "Since my student days," Moore wrote, "I have liked the shape of bones, and I have drawn them, studied them in the Natural History Museum, found them on sea-shores and saved them out of the stew-pot" (quoted in A. Wilkinson, Henry Moore Remembered, Ontario, 1988, p. 199). His use of bones as the basis for his sculptures reached a climax in the early 1960's. Moore spoke about the centrality of bones to the sculptures of this period, including Standing Figure: Knife Edge:
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 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. Later in 1961 I used this knife-edge thinness throughout a whole figure...Standing Figure: Knife Edge. In walking around this sculpture the width and flatness from the front gradually change through the three-quarter views into the thin sharp edges of the side views, and then back again to the width seen from the back. And the back half of the figure bends backwards, is angled towards the sky, opens itself to the light in a rising upward movement--and this may be why at one time I called it Winged Victory. In a sculptor's work all sorts of experiences and influences are fused and used--and somewhere in this work there is a connection with the so-called Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre--and I would like to think that others see something Greek in this Standing Figure. (quoted in R. Melville, op. cit., p. 262)
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 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. Later in 1961 I used this knife-edge thinness throughout a whole figure...Standing Figure: Knife Edge. In walking around this sculpture the width and flatness from the front gradually change through the three-quarter views into the thin sharp edges of the side views, and then back again to the width seen from the back. And the back half of the figure bends backwards, is angled towards the sky, opens itself to the light in a rising upward movement--and this may be why at one time I called it Winged Victory. In a sculptor's work all sorts of experiences and influences are fused and used--and somewhere in this work there is a connection with the so-called Victory of Samothrace in the Louvre--and I would like to think that others see something Greek in this Standing Figure. (quoted in R. Melville, op. cit., p. 262)