Knife Edge Two Piece 1962–65 is an abstract bronze sculpture by Henry Moore. It is one of Moore's earliest sculptures in two pieces, a mode that he started to adopt in 1959. Its form was inspired by the shape of a bone fragment. Moore created the sculpture from an edition of 10 working models in 1962; these working models are now in public collections. Moore created four full-size casts between 1962 and 1965, with one retained by him. The three casts are on public display on College Green in Westminster, London; Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver; and the garden at Kykuit, the house of the Rockefeller family in Tarrytown, New York. Moore's own cast is on display at his former studio and estate, 'Hoglands' in Perry Green, Hertfordshire in southern England. A similar work, Mirror Knife Edge 1977 (or Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece), is displayed at the entrance to I. M. Pei's east wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The Westminster cast was donated by Moore through the Contemporary Art Society to what he believed was the City of London, but its actual ownership was undetermined for many years. The Westminster cast subsequently fell into disrepair, and was restored in 2013 after it became part of the British Parliamentary Art Collection; it was granted a Grade II* listing in January 2016.
Background
By 1960 Moore was moving on from his earlier works, directly inspired by the human form and with textured surfaces, such as Draped Seated Woman 1957–58, to more rounded abstract shapes, inspired by the shapes of stones or bones. Moore made a connected work in 1961, also inspired by bone, Standing Figure (Knife Edge) (LH 482).
Working model
In 1962 Moore created an edition of 10 working models (LH 504) for a new two-piece sculpture. The Tate Gallery in London acquired a small working model in 1963. Other working models are in the collections of the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, the Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki, the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, and the Kunsthaus in Zurich. Moore planned the full-size sculpture to be over 10 feet high, large enough for a person to walk between the two elements.
Sculpture
The full-size sculpture, catalogued as "LH 516", was cast in an edition of four (or "3+1"; one being retained by the artist). Moore was inspired by the "lightness and strength of bone fragment" in creating the piece. The full-size sculptures, long and weighing about , were cast by Hermann Noack in Berlin.
The second cast of the work is located in Abingdon Street Gardens (better known as College Green) in the City of Westminster. The other full-size casts are located near the fountains next to Bloedel Floral Conservatory in Queen Elizabeth Park in Vancouver, BC, Canada, donated by Prentice Bloedel; near the Rose Garden of the Rockefeller family house at Kykuit at Tarrytown, New York. Moore donated his artist's copy (0/3) to the Henry Moore Foundation in 1977, and it is displayed at Perry Green, Hertfordshire.
Moore made a larger and reversed version of the sculpture, Mirror Knife Edge 1977 or Knife Edge Mirror Two Piece (LH 714) – which is 5.34x7.21x3.63m or about 17.5x23.7x11.9 feet and weighs about – which was commissioned for the entrance to I. M. Pei's east wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The work is carefully cleaned and conserved each year to maintain the distinction between its shiny and patinated surfaces, as the artist intended.
Westminster cast
The second cast of Knife Edge Two Piece is located in Abingdon Street Gardens, also known as College Green, opposite the Palace of Westminster in London. In 1965 Whitney Straight, the chairman of the Contemporary Art Society, wrote to Charles Pannell MP, the Minister of State for Public Buildings and Works to tell him that the society was "considering the possibility of ‘making a gift of a substantial work of art to be erected at some suitable site in London". The Contemporary Art Society met with Henry Moore to discuss their proposal and Moore subsequently chose the site at Abingdon Street Gardens for the sculpture. Moore waived his usual fee, and the Contemporary Art Society paid for the cost of the casting. The sculpture was unveiled by Robert Mellish, the Minister of Public Building and Works, on 1 September 1967.