Girl Seated Against Square Wall belongs to a series of seated figures that Moore created while thinking about a suitable sculpture he was commissioned to make for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Moore was at odds with the practice of completing a sculpture for an existing building as a simple enhancement to the architecture, and thought of his sculpted figures as independent works of art that needed to be seen at all angles and not as an adornment positioned against a surface. Creating an architectural element for the sculpture itself—the square wall, in the case of the present work—was his solution to this problem. The wall not only places the figure in a predetermined setting, it also creates an independent and private space in which the seated figure exists. Moore eventually left the UNESCO commission without this backdrop (see fig. 1), but it became a device that he explored in his sculpture throughout the 1950s and beyond.
The challenge of relating a sculptural figure to its architectural surroundings continued to fascinate Moore for the remainder of the decade. He produced several sculptures which combine human and architectural forms, including the present work as well as Figure on Steps executed around the same t.mes (see fig. 2). Moore eventually abandoned the idea of a wall for the UNESCO building, as the figure would not have been visible from inside the building, however he developed this motif into several sculptures in their own right, including the present bronze.
The UNESCO commission presented an important challenge for Moore, and the gestation process eventually resulted in a number of independent sculptures. As Roger Berthoud wrote: "He tried draped and undraped seated female figures, mother with a standing child, figures on steps, figures reading. He was worried about the visibility of a bronze, darkened by urban pollution, against the glass windows of the main façade, so he provided some pieces with their own bronze background wall—only to realize they would thus be invisible from inside the building" (R. Berthoud, The Life of Henry Moore, New York, 1987, p. 306). Here, the combination of the organic shape of the female form and the rhythmic horizontal lines of the wall makes this a wonderfully dynamic work.
The theme of the seated figure—as distinct from Moore’s reclining or standing figures—was also first evident in Moore’s work of the 1950s (see figs. 2 & 3). Usually upright and frontal in pose Moore's seated figures have a majestic stability and weight that conveys an internalized sense of calm contemplation. The present bronze depicts a female figure, seated upright on a bench perpendicular to the backdrop of a vertical plane—the high-backed wall of the title—which creates a sense of delineated private space. The figures' static attitude is carefully offset by subtle asymmetry where a head tilts gently to the right and a shoulder drops to create a soft twist and hint of movement.
The present work comes from an edition of twelve casts plus one artist's proof. Other casts of Girl Seated Against Square Wall are found in the collects ions of the Norton Simon Foundation, Pasadena, the Fondation Veranneman in Kruishoutem, Belgium and the University of Arizona Museum of Art in Tucson.
