The motif of a sitting figure is a nearly obsessive phenomenon for the sculptor as well as the graphic artist. This lithograph recalls somewhat earlier drawings. Henry Moore had once remarked that some of his early sketches did not entirely develop space, and he had added that drawing followed different laws than those governing sculpture. Each medium demands its interpretation. A wash drawing from 1930 'Sitting Figure in Armchair', for example, leads, after many transformations, to 'Figure on the Steps', a motif which found monumental expression in his sculpture.

For Moore, the abstract and the figurative are nearly the same. There the large seed shape of the female, and here the variable image of the woman. This is also an overview over his graphic works from all periods. His nudes evoke the vision of the mother as well as the girl. 'Seated Woman' is a good example of this. In this print, the drawing is a light structure of lines, the lithograph seems like bright graffiti on a dark background. The sketch retains a sense of the intimately private, the personal. It is in the stage before transformation, with seed-like abstract basic features. This was a goal which Moore always strove to achieve in his works.

Moore's leitmotifs are reclining figures, a resting mother and child. In the color lithograph Seven Reclining Figures (printed in 1979), Moore took up the essential forms of his sculptural style. In the 60's and 70's, he creates many graphics with this title. Moore remained true to the figure. They are variations of reclining figures. This series of figures recalls his famous early drawings from 1940-41 of the tunnel bomb shelter. Even then, he was preoccupied with the massive qualities of the body as well as the spatial penetration of volume. From his Realist and Surreal works to his abstract elements, the figure underwent a transformation. This process is also present in his work in the opposite direction. In this astonishing print, form is brought into a thick line through a process of compression, into a homogenous core. The bodies show no breaks, the light glances off of them and the limbs anchor themselves in space. This conclusive graphic is like the embryo of an incredible oeuvre. The closed figure will later break up into parts. The void, the spaces in between, will be assigned to enclosing the figure in space.

These sculptor's ideas on paper are realized as real sculptures in terracotta, wood, stone, metal, concrete and bronze. In the 70's, Moore put several preliminary sketches for sculptures into graphic form. In the color lithograph 'Six sculpture ideas' (printed in 1979), the Moore who had early matured to his own artistic language is unrecognizable: the volumes of the bodies, reclining as well as standing; forms and rhythms which flow into abstraction and physicality. Void is formed by the limbs escaping from the torso. Matter and void as two sovereign media of creation. The figure becomes a spatial body of sound. Moore acts upon a radical idea the plastic body. Even the smallest of formats is monumentality itself. This is also related to volume. He plays with his ideas, an infinite range of ideas: the heavy, monolithic qualities of his sketches for stone sculptures; the rhythm and the appearance of being lifted into space of his bronzes and wood sculptures; and the characteristically decisive style of his artistic language, which evokes the history of 20th century art in this exemplary, multifarious print.