Henry Moore - Reclining Figure: Festival 1951
Reclining Figure: Festival 1951
230cm Bronze with a brown patina
Sold for: USD 30,1 million
Auction house: Christie's, London
Sale date: 7 February 2012
Seller: Private collection
Buyer: Private collection
From Christie’s:
The work was the artist’s first, large reclining figure to be cast in bronze, and, in many ways, represented the pinnacle of the artist’s exploration of the reclining human form from the 1920s, and his pioneering attempt to combine the body with a sense of both landscape and space.
Moore himself claimed that Reclining Figure: Festival was the ‘first sculpture in which I succeeded in making form and space sculpturally inseparable’ and singled it out as one of the most important sculptures of his entire œuvre.
From its conception, the artist seemed aware that the work would prove to be a landmark in the history of his art and, in 1951, in conjunction with the filmmaker John Read, ensured that every stage of the genesis of the work was documented for what became the first of a series of ground-breaking documentary films by Read on the artist at work.