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Selection
Mother and Child: Fragment
Henry Moore2025.09.01 ~ 2025.09.07
Description of the work
- Media Bronze
- Location Signiel Seoul 79F Salon de SIGNIEL
The theme of mother and child was one Moore returned to throughout his career — a central and enduring subject. His early masterful treatment of this motif earned him his first major public commission in 1943, for the Madonna and Child at St. Matthew’s Church in Northampton. His experiences of the war, as well as the death of his mother and the birth of his daughter, encouraged and inspired him to enshrine this motif in particular. He wrote:
‘…the subject itself is eternal and unending, with so many sculptural possibilities in it – a small form in relation to a big form, the big form protecting the small one, and so on. It is such a rich subject, both humanly and compositionally, that I will always go on using it.’
The present work is a tender and playful representation of this subject. The child stands balanced on their mother’s knees. While connected there is also a degree of independence, with the child standing for the first time perhaps, or perhaps fall into the mother’s arms.
Inquiry: Info.seoul@sothebys.com
‘…the subject itself is eternal and unending, with so many sculptural possibilities in it – a small form in relation to a big form, the big form protecting the small one, and so on. It is such a rich subject, both humanly and compositionally, that I will always go on using it.’
The present work is a tender and playful representation of this subject. The child stands balanced on their mother’s knees. While connected there is also a degree of independence, with the child standing for the first time perhaps, or perhaps fall into the mother’s arms.
Inquiry: Info.seoul@sothebys.com
About the author
Henry Moore stands as one of the most transformative figures in 20th-century sculpture, a visionary whose work redefined the parameters of modern art. His signature semi-abstract forms, often rendered in bronze and stone, are celebrated for their organic fluidity and profound engagement with the human figure.
Born in Yorkshire, he studied at the Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art before becoming one of Europe's leading avant-garde sculptors in the 1930s. His career spanned sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and textile design, achieving global recognition in his lifetime and shaping a British sculptural renaissance.
Moore’s works can be found in the collections of globally renowned institutions such as the Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds, Tate Britain in London, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Samsung Collection in Korea, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among many others.
Born in Yorkshire, he studied at the Leeds School of Art and the Royal College of Art before becoming one of Europe's leading avant-garde sculptors in the 1930s. His career spanned sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and textile design, achieving global recognition in his lifetime and shaping a British sculptural renaissance.
Moore’s works can be found in the collections of globally renowned institutions such as the Henry Moore Foundation in Leeds, Tate Britain in London, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Samsung Collection in Korea, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among many others.
Henry Moore (b. 1898 -1986, England)
