Standing Figure: Knife Edge


Standing Figure: Knife Edge is a bronze sculpture by the English artist Henry Moore. It was cast in two full-size versions: Standing Figure: Knife Edge in 1961, and a larger Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge in 1976. The sculpture also is sometimes known as Standing Figure or Winged Figure.
Moore first conceived the work in 1961. It is based on a fragment of a bird's breastbone, to which a base and a head were added with plasticine. A rounded protrusion forms the head, and the figure has a diagonal line at its waist. The resulting composition resembles a human torso, similar to the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It had been described as the end point of Moore's investigation of upright figures, which started with Standing Figure . He used a similar process, starting with bone fragments, for his 1962 work, Knife Edge Two Piece.
The sculpture was enlarged in three stages. First, Moore made a high working model in 1961. The Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green, Hertfordshire, has two versions, one in plaster and another in fibreglass, and other examples are held by the Hakone Open-Air Museum in Japan, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.
Second, Moore made the high Standing Figure: Knife Edge, cast at the Morris Singer art foundry in 1961 in an edition of 7. The artist's copy, cast 0, is displayed in the W. B. Yeats Memorial Garden at St Stephen's Green in Dublin. This piece was restored in 2020. There are other examples at:
Moore enlarged the work again to create the high Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge, cast in 1976 in an edition of 8. The two artists copies, cast 0 and cast 00, are owned by the Henry Moore Foundation, with one displayed in Greenwich Park from 1979 to 2007, and again since 2011.
There are other examples at: