Another big and powerful oldie — “Knife Edge Two Piece“, Henry Moore, at Queen Elizabeth Park. One of an edition of four made around 1962-65, it weighs 3-odd tons.
It was donated to the Park Board by avid modern art collector Prentice Bloedel and his wife Virginia along with the funding to build the Conservatory, the surrounding plaza and fountains.
Henry Moore was the most important British sculptor of the 20th century, and the most popular and internationally celebrated sculptor of the post-war period. Non-Western art was crucial in shaping his early work – he would say that his visits to the ethnographic collections of the British Museum were more important than his academic study. Later, leading European modernists such as Picasso, Arp, Brancusi and Giacometti became influences. And uniting these inspirations was a deeply felt humanism. He returned again and again to the motifs of the mother and child, and the reclining figure, and often used abstract form to draw analogies between the human body and the landscape.
Thanks to: the Art Story.
