Henry Moore emerged in the 1930s as one of the leading artists of his generation. Like his friend Paul Nash, Moore was exploring surrealism while resisting the temptation to indulge in the pure abstraction of Ben Nicholson and his fellow sculptor Barbara Hepworth. Moore favored organic forms, and the bold asymmetry found in Bird and Egg is bound up with his fundamentally representational approach. As he put it at the time: "Asymmetry is connected also with the desire for the organic (which I have) rather than the geometric." Like Nash and John Piper, he was also interested in the idea of place. Here he used a native stone, a green Cumberland alabaster, which was quarried within the British Isles and also had a long tradition of use in British sculpture. The young Moore felt that he should know and use native varieties of stone in preference to material acquired from abroad. Gallery label for Connections (Yale Center for British Art, 2011-05-26 - 2011-09-11)