Mother and Child

Henry Moore produced stringed sculptures only during a short period of time, from 1937 to 1940. He was inspired, in part, by the mathematical models he saw at the Science Museum in London. Despite the sculpture’s abstract vocabulary, it clearly aligns with a recurring subject within the artist’s oeuvre, as the title Mother and Child demonstrates. The rounded, organic shapes within could variously suggest a head, an eye, a breast or the fusing of the form of an infant to the left with the profile of a woman on the right, the taut parallel strings providing a unifying element. An example of Moore’s complex sources, both in terms of subject matter and stylistic references, it also provides a pretext for the artist to carry out the formal juxtaposition of linearity against mass, and rounded against hollowed shapes that was typical of his production during this period.