Henry Moore – Reclining Figure: Festival © Susan Young
Henry Moore’s ground-breaking 1951 modernist sculpture Reclining Figure: Festival will lead the sculpture section of Christie’s 250th anniversary auction, Defining British Art, in London on June 30. Commissioned for the Festival of Britain in 1951 it was a focal point on the newly built South Bank. This was Moore’s first large reclining figure to be cast in bronze. The artist said it was the first sculpture in which he succeeded in making form and space sculpturally inseparable. The work is now estimated at £15-20 million. It will be offered alongside further large-scale major British sculptures by Dame Barbara Hepworth, Sea Form (Atlantic), 1964 (£3-5 million) and Lynn Chadwick, Back to Venice, 1988 from the artist’s estate (£1.4-1.8 million).
Cyanne Chutkow, Deputy Chairman, Impressionist & Modern Art, Christie’s said: “Reclining Figure: Festival is one of the great masterpieces of Moore’s oeuvre and is arguably his most masterful and elegant sculptural synthesis of form and space. Privately held in an American collection for almost a half century, this work is a testament to the owners’ discerning and sophisticated artistic sensibility.”
UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR A RECORD £24.7 MILLION