This sculpture has had quite an eventful life. It was commissioned for the garden of a modernist house in Sussex designed by the architect Serge Chermayeff. Moore intended the piece to act as a soft, curved transition between the rolling hills of the South Downs and the rectilinear, vertically aligned forms of the house. When Chermayeff went bankrupt it was bought by the Tate. In 1939 the sculpture found itself stranded in New York, having been loaned for an exhibition there when war broke out. On display outside it was damaged first by the freezing temperatures and second by vandalism; fortunately it has survived, albeit a bit battered. Then, in 1972 it was chosen as one of 12 sculptures for a ground-breaking exhibition at the Tate for the blind where visitors were encouraged to touch the works in gloved hands. I imagine that must have been very consoling. So, although it was made outside, in the garden of Moore’s cottage in Kent, to stand outside in a Sussex garden, it now finds itself stuck inside in Pimlico.
