The present work was likely inspired by Moore’s encounter with Naum Gabo’s sculptures and Man Ray’s photographs of mathematical models with each utilising a similar string technique. The strings create a tension – both actual and metaphorical, and depict a sense of claustrophobia, anxiety, and entrapment that many have associated with the turbulent politics of the 1930s and feelings of apprehension attached to the threat of another global conflict.

Moore wrote of his stringed pieces that ‘one end could be twisted to produce forms that would be terribly difficult to draw on a flat surface. It wasn't the scientific study of these models but the ability to look through the strings as with a bird cage and see one form within the other which excited me’.