YORKSHIRE Sculpture Park is to offer a new perspective on the work of Yorkshire's greatest sculptor, Henry Moore, in an exhibition of more than 120 works from March 7 to September 6 next year.

Produced in partnership with the Henry Moore Foundation, Henry Moore: Back To A Land will consider the artist’s profound relationship with land, something that was fundamental to his practice and fuelled his visual vocabulary.

“The mystery of what is under the shroud is somewhat akin to the mystery in poetry," said Moore in 1974.

"It is this element of the unknown that fascinates me in caves and the holes in the sides of hills – you don’t know what is there until you look and explore into them. This mystery excites the imagination and poetry has the same multi-meaning that makes you explore it in depth.”

Born into a Castleford mining family, Henry Moore (1898–1986) was one of the most important artists of the 20th century and was a founding patron of the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, this year's winner of the Art Fund's Museum of the Year.

Back To A Land will explore the artist’s radical notion of placing sculpture in the landscape, a philosophy that forever changed British sculpture.

Moore was committed to showing his work in the open air and in the rolling hills of YSP’s former deer park in particular. Here, it can be experienced with the resident flock of sheep, an animal described by the artist as an ideal foil for the appreciation of his work, being exactly the right size and scale.

The exhibition takes its title from Jacquetta Hawkes's 1951 book A Land, a poetic history of the physical landscape of Britain. Moore illustrated a 1954 edition and the exhibition will features these originals.

Monumental sculptures, such as Large Two Forms (1966–69) and Large Reclining Figure (1984), will be displayed against the vistas of the Bretton Estate. Experienced as monuments in the landscape, and referencing prehistoric land interventions, Moore’s sculptures in the open air are ever changing, given life through different skies, weather and seasons.

This interest in the relationship between sculpture and landscape can be seen in the contemporary works by David Nash, Andy Goldsworthy and other land artists that share the estate, where the sculptures are curated in relation to each other. Outdoor pieces are visible from the galleries and the yew hedge forms a dramatic backdrop to the indoor spaces.

By exploring scale and the interplay between internal and external spaces, Henry Moore: Back To A Land will emphasise the artist’s constant investigation of land, from the black coal seams of his hometown and the rich geology of Britain, to the mystical ancient forms of Stonehenge. Inside the purpose-built Underground Gallery, sculptures, maquettes and rarely seen works on paper, such as Rocky Landscape (1982), will demonstrate Moore’s understanding of geology and rock formations and reference his childhood experience of caves.

The human figure, like the landscape, was at the core of Moore’s practice. Consequently, works in the exhibition will look at the relationship between figure and landscape through both the iconic large-scale sculptures that made Moore's name, as well as through rarely seen two-dimensional works.

Moore was able to present on paper imaginary landscapes not possible in three dimensions, drawn from his own psyche and experiences. For example, in the atmospheric etching, Reclining Figure In Dark Landscape (1979–80), landscape and figure become a single formidable being, while the etching Elephant Skull (1970) could be mistaken for a scene of rocks and crevices but in reality demonstrates Moore’s interest in bones and skeletal structures; the interior space of the body in relation to that of the earth.

The themes of the exhibition will be given context by a carefully selected display of personal artefacts, notes, sketches and photographs, curated by the artist’s only child, Mary Moore.

Henry Moore: Back To A Land will be accompanied by an extensive learning and events programme, a publication with in-situ photography, an exhibition film and an exclusive range of merchandise.

Henry Moore: Back To A Land will run at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, from March 7 to September 6 next year.