Inspired by the shape of a piece of flint, Moore created a maquette for the sculpture in plaster which was cast in an edition of small bronzes, some 15 centimetres (5.9 in) long. The maquette was used to create a full-size version in polystyrene, which was used to create a mould for a monumental sculpture.
The sculpture can be viewed as an abstraction of a reclining female human figure, resting on one arm, hip and two legs, with the second arm raised, and a prominence on the chest suggesting a breast. It has no evident face.
Six full-size copies were cast in 1969 and early 1970, at the Noack factory in Berlin, and an artist's copy was cast shortly before Moore's death in 1986. The sculpture measures 3 × 3.6 × 2 metres (9.8 × 11.8 × 6.6 ft) and weighs around 2 tonnes (2.2 tons). One cast was exhibited in a major retrospective of his work at the Forte di Belvedere in Florence in 1972, later described by Moore as the pinnacle of his career.
The artist's cast (0/6) was stolen from the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green, Hertfordshire on 15 December 2005. It is believed to have been hoisted onto the back of a stolen flatbed Mercedes lorry using a crane, cut up for scrap the same night, and shipped to Rotterdam, and then probably to the Far East. The sculpture was estimated to be worth £3m, but only £1,500 as scrap. The theft inspired German artist Fritz Balthaus in 2009 to cast bronze ingots of equivalent weight which, arranged in a form approximating Moore's sculpture, are displayed as Pure Moore at the Federal Criminal Police Office in Berlin.[2]
