The Upright Motives were part of a large commission, for the courtyard of the new Olivetti building in Milan. Moore stated that “my immediate thought was that any sculpture that I should do must be in contrast to this horizontal rhythm. It needed some vertical form in front of it. At the time I also wanted to have a change from the Reclining Figure theme that I had returned to so often.”

Altogether Moore created twelve Upright Motives in the mid 1950s. The sculpture which developed a primitive cruciform head later became known as the Glenkiln Cross, after a farm on a private estate in Scotland where the first cast of the work was sited. In their powerful symbolism these pieces owe much to the tall, upright stones, known as menhirs, from prehistoric times. Moore brought all these influences together to create forms which are unmistakably his own.