Henry Moore, Working Model for Spindle Piece, 1968-9

1968

Medium

bronze

Edition

LH 592, cast in 1969 by Art Bronze Foundry, London, edition no.4/10, from an edition of 10 + 1

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-153583

Large Spindle Piece was based on the shape of a piece of flint with protruding points that Moore found near his Perry Green home. It was also greatly inspired by Moore’s fascination with Michelangelo, which had begun almost 50 years earlier. A Royal Academy Scholarship had enabled Moore to travel to Italy in 1925 where he visited the Sistine Chapel. The dynamism created by the almost touching fingers of Adam and God in Michelangelo’s depiction of the Creation had inspired Moore to think about the tension between points and the energy this could convey. Large Spindle Piece also developed an earlier idea from the work Three Points made in 1939; he said: “Here again the points are used to give action: inwards in the case of the Three Points, but here to give action outwards”.