| Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae | |
| Wikidata: | Q19760188 |
| Image Upright: | 1 |
| Artist: | Henry Moore |
| Year: | 1968-1969 |
| Catalogue: | LH 580[1] |
| Medium: | Bronze |
| Length Metric: | 710 |
| City: | Perry Green |
Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae (LH 580) is an abstract bronze sculpture by Henry Moore.[2]
The three part sculpture looks back to his earlier multi-part sculptures of human figures, and also his interlocking works such as Two Piece Sculpture No. 7: Pipe from 1966. Moore started with a plaster maquette in 1968 (LH 578),[3] with three interlocking elements inspired by bones or flints.
He created a second larger plaster working model, which was cast in bronze in 1968 as his Working Model for Three Piece No.3: Vertebrae (LH 579),[4] in an edition of eight (plus an artist's copy, which is at the Tate Gallery in London).[5] It measures 94x. Other casts are held by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C.,[6] the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York,[7] and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.[8] Others are in private collections.[9] One example was sold at Christie's in 2012 for over £5m.[10]
The working model was scaled up in 1968–69 into a full-size bronze sculpture, measuring x x 10feet (LH 580). The full-size sculpture was cast in edition of three (plus one for the artist). One example is installed outside the Safeco Plaza (1001 4th Avenue) in Seattle, Washington.[11] It was surveyed and deemed "well maintained" by the Smithsonian Institution's "Save Outdoor Sculpture!" program in May 1995.[2] [12] The others are at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem,[13] and the Landesbausparkasse in Münster,[14] with the artist's copy at the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green, Hertfordshire.
Three Forms Vertebrae (LH 580a),[15] also known as Dallas Piece or Vertebrae, is an abstract bronze sculpture by Henry Moore.[2] It was cast in 1978–79, specifically for a site outside I.M. Pei's Dallas City Hall, and is the largest version of a sculpture that Moore created in 1968.Moore was commissioned in 1978 to create a sculpture to stand in the City Centre Park Plaza outside the Dallas City Hall, for which he scaled up his 1968–69 work Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae (LH 580).[8]