Chiyoda Insurance Company, Tokyo (received as a gift in January 1966)
Acquired by the present owner in 1974

Will Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, detail illustrated of another cast pl. 159
Ionel Jianou, Henry Moore, Paris, 1968, no. 385, illustration of another cast pl. 48
Robert Melville, Henry Moore: Sculptures and drawings 1921-1969, London, 1970, no. 506, illustration of another cast p. 233
Giulio Carlo Argan, Henry Moore, New York, 1971, colour illustration of another cast  p. 128
David Finn, Henry Moore. Sculpture and Environment, London, 1977, illustrated  in colour p. 53, illustrated pp. 52 & 53-56; illustration of another cast pp. 392-95
Josep Iglesias del Marquet, Henry Moore y el Inquietante Infinito, Barcelona, 1979, detail illustrated in colour of another cast fig. 50
David Mitchinson (ed.), Henry Moore sculpture, London, 1981, no. 271, detail illustrated in colour of another cast p. 135
Alan Bowness (ed.), Henry Moore, Sculpture and drawings, London, 1986, vol. III, no. 388, illustrations of another cast p. 23, pls. 10 & 11
John Hedgecoe, A Monumental Vision – the sculpture of Henry Moore, London, 1998, no. 353, illustration of another cast p. 220
David Mitchinson et al., Celebrating Moore. Works from the collection of The Henry Moore Foundation, London, 1998, no. 177, colour illustrations of another cast p. 249
Christa Lichtenstern, Henry Moore. Work – Theory – Impact, London, 2008, no. 379, colour illustration of another cast p. 335

Rich light brown patina. The work used to be placed outdoors, and has since been re-patinated and varnished for indoor use. There are some small air holes inherent to the casting process. This work is in good condition.
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Henry Moore’s towering Upright Motive No. 8 is one of the finest examples from his series of monolithic sculptures executed during the mid-1950s. The artist initially conceived these works to interact with various outdoor environments, as he explained: ‘I did a series of Upright Motives around 1955. They came about because I was asked to do a sculpture to stand in front of Olivetti’s new office building in Milan. I went to see the building – it was a low horizontal building which I thought needed a contrast. This led me to do a lot of variations on the Upright Motives theme, which I enjoyed doing as a contrast to the Reclining Figure rhythm. But I never carried out the commission. I lost the wish to do it as I realised the sculpture would always be surrounded by motor cars. This sculpture [the present work] has in it the idea of a cross (as in the Glenkiln Cross), but the silhouette of it from a distance does not read as a cross, and so it would not have been right for the Glenkiln site. The top can be looked upon as a head – a face with eyes!’ (quoted in David Finn, op. cit., p. 392).

The extraordinary composition of these bronzes reflects Moore’s fascination with the natural world as well as his delight in the art of primitive cultures. A compulsive collector of ossified and fossilised detritus, Moore would incorporate a wide range of organic forms in his work, both figurative and purely abstract designs. As Moore acknowledged, the Upright Motives contain a wealth of influences. The hieratic appearance of these sculptures owes much to their overall cruciform design, taken in part from Celtic and Gaelic sources, and is exemplified by the Upright Motive No. 1: Glenkiln Cross. However, as Will Grohmann suggests: ‘The Upright Motives are completely Moore and yet anonymous, universal and transcendental, sacred though not Christian, and they possess the same degree of absoluteness as all timeless art’ (Will Grohmann, The Art of Henry Moore, London, 1960, p. 198).

Discussing the present model and its accompanying sculptures, Anita Feldman and Suzanne Eustace stated: ‘These motives […] bring to mind native American totem poles – an association acknowledged by Moore himself and endorsed by many scholars. [..] But speaking of Upright Motive No. 8 Moore later referred to a more primitive influence, that of a Jamaican wood carving of a bird man, seen by him in the British Museum (fig. 1). The sentry-like forms are confident and solid; their truncated forms have nooks and crannies, deep grooves and intriguing orifices. The motives seem to be life-size – though in reality they are twice as big – and appear ambiguously figurative’ (A. Feldman & S. Eustace, Moore at Kew (exhibition catalogue), Royal Botanic Gardens, London, 2007, p. 44).

Herbert Read has noted that the Upright Motives of  1955-56 are a powerful example of the inimitable inventiveness of Moore’s work, a quality sometimes overlooked in light of his remarkable dedication to the Reclining Figure and the Mother and Child themes. The Upright Motives are exceptional examples of how Moore was capable of producing entirely new types of sculpture within the context of his own ingenious idiom. In total Moore completed maquettes for 13 Upright Motives, all of which varied in the degrees of abstraction and purveyed a variety of influences, some conspicuously totemic whilst others are more classically proportioned. Eight of these were chosen to be completed as monumental works, casts of which are located in museums and public spaces worldwide. Other casts of the present work are in the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio and Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena.