Maquette for Hill Arches, 1972
Bronze
Signed and numbered on the bronze base from the edition of 9.


The genesis of ‘Hill Arches’ lies in Moore’s wish to find a particular sculptural solution to a hillside location at his home at Much Hadham. David Finn takes up the story:

‘Moore also kept looking at the hill in the distance, wondering what sculptural shape would most effectively take advantage of that graceful swelling of the land. Several years after he acquired the land Moore showed my wife and me a working model for a new sculpture that he had designed for the hill. This seemed to us unlike anything of his that we had seen before. There were three pieces which fitted together, and a fourth egglike shape, which was placed on the base and carefully related to the other forms. Moore explained how he thought the piece would look from below with its swooping arches rising into the sky and the interacting with each other. He had decided he would create this on a large scale, for his hilltop, and call it Hill Arches’

A cast of the monumental Hill Arches, at 18 feet immense even by Moore’s ambitious standards, is installed in front of the Karlskirche in Vienna. Described by Moore as a ‘baroque sculpture for a baroque church’ it does indeed have a structural intricacy and flamboyance that echoes the baroque.
12.5 x 16.5 x 10.0 cm (5 x 6½ x 4 inches)

Provenance:
The artist
Wildenstein & Co, New York. August 1975
Private Collection, Canada

Literature:
Henry Moore, Volume 4 , Complete Sculptures 1964-73, edited by Alan Bowness , published by Lund Humphries, London, Cat No 634