Ideas for Sculpture
The year of this drawing, 1936, marks Henry Moore’s participation in the International Surrealist Exhibition held in London. The four large shapes of this large black-and-white study of a reclining female figure are closely related to the biomorphic Surrealist forms of Jean (Hans) Arp or Joan Miró.
The freely drawn doodles and other linear marks at the top of the composition may even originate in the Surrealist concept of tapping the unconscious and the practice of automatic drawing. They appear as a visualization of a working method practiced by Moore, in which, as the sculptor later wrote, he would begin a drawing "with no preconceived problem to solve, with only the desire to use pencil on paper, and make lines, tones, and shapes with no conscious aim; but as my mind takes in what is so produced, a point arrives where some idea becomes conscious and crystallizes, and then a control and ordering begins to take place."
