Henry Moore Working Model for 'Oval with Points', 1968-1969

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Working Model for 'Oval with Points'
Artist name
Henry Moore
Date created
1968-1969
Classification
sculpture
Medium
bronze
Dimensions
46 1/8 × 36 1/4 × 21 3/8 in. (117.1 × 92.2 × 54.4 cm)
Credit
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Copyright
© The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved, DACS / www.henry-moore.org
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.89
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

How did an animal bone inspire this sculpture?

Show TranscriptHide Transcript

transcripts

NARRATOR: 

The starting-point for this piece by British sculptor Henry Moore was a curious object that he spotted in a friend’s garden.  

 

SARAH ROBERTS:  

Henry Moore was good friends with Sir Julian Huxley, who was an evolutionary biologist …  

 

NARRATOR:  

Sarah Roberts – 

 

ROBERTS: …who had this skull of an elephant in his garden as just a curiosity. And Henry Moore was completely taken with it and fascinated by the contrast between interior and exterior and the way that the bone kind of wrapped and-and turned itself from inside to outside.  

 

Those two points – they’re very sharp and don’t quite connect really set up a high tension both within the void, the open space in the middle, but also in that kind of ring-shaped, soft form around them. There’s this electricity almost that shoots out between those two points, like a spark plug. 

 

There’s a whole series of prints and drawings that he did specifically related to this skull; and the Huxleys later gave him the skull, and it was in his studio, I think, for the rest of his life because it was just something that he returned to again and again as a source. 

 

Read MoreCollapse

Other Works by Henry Moore

See other works by Henry Moore

Please note that artwork locations are subject to change, and not all works are on view at all times.

Only a portion of SFMOMA's collection is currently online, and the information presented here is subject to revision. Please contact us at collections@sfmoma.org to verify collection holdings and artwork information. If you are interested in receiving a high resolution image of an artwork for educational, scholarly, or publication purposes, please contact us at copyright@sfmoma.org.

This resource is for educational use and its contents may not be reproduced without permission. Please review our Terms of Use for more information.