Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae (LH 580a), also known as Dallas Piece or Vertebrae, is an abstract bronze sculpture by Henry Moore.[1] It was cast in 1978–79, specifically for a site outside I.M. Pei's Dallas City Hall, and is the largest version of a sculpture that Moore created in 1968.

The three part sculpture looks back to his earlier multi-part sculptures of human figures, and also his interlocking works such as Two Piece Sculpture No. 7: Pipe from 1966. Moore started with a plaster maquette in 1968, with three interlocking elements inspired by bones or flints. He created a second larger plaster working model, which was cast in bronze in 1968 as his Working Model for Three Piece No.3: Vertebrae (LH 579), in an edition of eight (plus an artist's copy, which is at the Tate Gallery in London).[2] It measures 94 by 236.3 by 122 centimetres (37.0 in × 93.0 in × 48.0 in). Other casts are held by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C.,[3] the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York,[4] and the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.[5] Others are in private collections.[6] One example was sold at Christie's in 2012 for over £5m.[7]

The working model was scaled up in 1968–69 into a full-size bronze sculpture, measuring 9 feet (2.7 m) x 24 feet (7.3 m) x 10 feet 7 inches (3.23 m) (LH 580). The full-size sculpture was cast in edition of three (plus one for the artist). One example is installed outside the Safeco Plaza (1001 4th Avenue) in Seattle, Washington.[8] It was surveyed and deemed "well maintained" by the Smithsonian Institution's "Save Outdoor Sculpture!" program in May 1995.[1][9] The others are at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem,[10] and the Landesbausparkasse in Münster,[11] with the artist's copy at the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green, Hertfordshire.

Moore was commissioned in 1978 to create a sculpture to stand in the City Centre Park Plaza outside the Dallas City Hall, for which he scaled up his 1968–69 work Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae.[5]

• 
  Full-size sculpture, Perry Green
• 
  Dallas Piece

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