British sculptor Henry Moore stated that his aim as a sculptor was to "understand and realize more completely what form and shape are about, and to react to form in life, in the human figure, and in past sculpture." He was especially interested in the theme of mother and child-a traditional image that allowed him to address birth, nurturing, and creativity. He tackled this theme hundreds of times, in both drawings and sculptures. Often, he rendered women in forms taken from nature, suggesting a link between woman and earth as fertile sources of life.

In a small tabletop bronze of 1956 depicting a seated mother and child, the fluid drapery of the woman's dress suggests a waterfall or a seashell. She holds her child at a distance, reticent rather than encompassing. In contrast, the female figure in the Garden's Reclining Mother and Child, completed in 1961, seems to be a part of the earth; the woman's rounded, hollowed forms resemble hills or rocks. She gently cradles her child, who seems to have emerged from her large cavelike or womblike aperture. Standing Figure: Knife Edge (1961), also in the Garden, further demonstrates Moore's interest in natural forms. He was intrigued by the shapes of bones and fossils; this sculpture is based on the breastbone of a chicken. Its flattened, arching "wings" also suggest flight and link the figure-probably female-to images of ancient Greek winged goddesses.
 
 

Standing Figure: Knife Edge 1961
bronze

Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Gift of the T. B. Walker Foundation, 1963