Reclining Figure by Henry Moore

Thinking Through Martin Heidegger (1889-1976)’s “The Origin of the Work of Art”

Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure returns us to the horizon of the landscape—open, curved, pierced. The human body is there, and yet not there. For Heidegger, this sculpture would be a profound gathering of earth and sky—a site of openness where Being resonates as form-space tension.

The reclining pose is ancient—evoking river gods, fertility goddesses—but Moore abstracts it into pure relationality. The figure is no longer closed—it is opened up, voids cut through limbs and torso. Heidegger might call this a letting of the void appear. The sculpture is no longer mass but event—a passage, a flow of world into matter and back.

The earth—stone, bronze, wood—retains its thingly resistance. But it is not hidden. It is raised into light, pierced by air. The world—postwar fragility, British landscapes, maternal continuity—flows around and within the figure. The reclining woman is no longer a subject. She is a dwelling-place, Being made porous.

Moore’s figure is not repose—it is horizon. Heidegger would see it as that which shelters space, that which lets the open be, without trying to contain it.