Reclining Figure 1939 Reclining Figure 1939 Reclining Figure 1939 (LH 210) is an elmwood sculpture by Henry Moore. It is an abstracted reclining human figure, with looped head, shoulders, and sinuous body and limbs. The sculpture draws on Moore's small terracotta 1938 "Reclining Figure" ( long, now lost) which was cast in bronze (LH 185, in an edition of 7+1: seven casts for sale, and one artist's copy). Moore scaled up the earlier sculpture up to carve in wood, creating a unique work which measures . It is one of six large reclining figures in elmwood carved by Moore between 1935 and 1978.
Reclining Figure: Festival space and the form are completely dependent on and inseparable from each other. I had reached the stage where I wanted my sculpture to be truly three-dimensional. In my earliest use of holes in sculpture, the holes were features in themselves. Now the space and form are so naturally fused that they are one." (quoted at the Tate) In 1968, he included the work as one of his four most important works, alongside his Recumbent Figure 1938 in green Hornton stone, the elmwood Reclining Figure 1939 now in the Detroit Institute of Arts, and first large bronze two-piece sculpture Reclining