Barbara Hepworth Cone and Sphere – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition dates: 21st May 2021 – 27th February 2022

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Pierced Hemisphere
1937
White marble
The Hepworth Wakefield (Wakefield Permanent Art Collection)
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness
Photo: Norman Taylor

As a bit of a break from photography, something very special this weekend especially for me. I adore this artist’s work.

Solid / voids
space / forms
still / movements
pierced / circles
memory / landscapes
music / curves
Spirit / leaps!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Hepworth Wakefield for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“The relationship between humans and landscape played a key role in Hepworth’s creative development. In 1949, she settled down in St Ives, Cornwall, where she stayed until her death. The harmony of the sea, earth and rocks in this remote part of England had a significant impact on her.”

“Barbara Hepworth is one of the most important artists of the 20th century, with a unique artistic vision that demands to be looked at in-depth. This exhibition will shine a light on Hepworth’s wide-ranging interests and how they infused her art practice. Deeply spiritual and passionately engaged with political, social and technological debates in the 20th century, Hepworth was obsessed with how the physical encounter with sculpture could impact the viewer and alter their perception of the world.”

Eleanor Clayton, Curator

“Hole turned out to be spelt with a W as well as an H. Holes were not gaps, they were connections. Hepworth made the hole into a connection between different expressions of form, and she made space into his own form.”

Jeannette Winterson

“I rarely draw what I see –
I draw what I feel in my body”

Barbara Hepworth

Installation images of Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life at the Hepworth Wakefield showing in the bottom image at right Single Form (September) (BH 312) in figured walnut, and a photograph at left of Single Form (1964) displayed near the pool in front of the United Nations Secretariat Building.
Photos: Nick Singleton

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Single Form (Chun Quoit)
1961
Plaster, painted brown
© Bowness, Hepworth Estate
Photo: Mark Heathcote

Barbara Hepworth working on the armature of Single Form in the Palais de Danse, St Ives
1961
© Bowness
Photo: Studio St Ives

Barbara Hepworth with the plaster prototype for the United Nations Single Form at the Morris Singer foundry, London
May 1963
Photo: Morgan-Wells
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness

Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life poster

Installation images of Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life at the Hepworth Wakefield.
Photos: Nick Singleton

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Kneeling Figure
1932
Rosewood
Purchased with aid from the Wakefield Permanent Art Fund (Friends of Wakefield Art Galleries and Museums), V&A Purchase Grant Fund and Wakefield Girls’ High School, 1944
© Bowness, Hepworth Estate
Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones

Installation images of Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life at the Hepworth Wakefield showing in the bottom image at centre, Spring (1966)
Photos: Nick Singleton

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Spring
1966
© Bowness, Hepworth Estate
Photo: Jerry Hardman

Installation images of Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life at the Hepworth Wakefield showing at second left Winged Figure (1961-62 below), and second right Rock Form (Porthcurno) (1964, below)

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Winged Figure
1961-1962
© Bowness, Hepworth Estate
Photo: Jonty Wilde

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Rock Form (Porthcurno)
1964
Plaster, painted green on the outside and blue/grey on the interior
© Bowness, Hepworth Estate
Photo: Jonty Wilde

To mark The Hepworth Wakefield‘s 10th anniversary, the Yorkshire-based gallery opened the most expansive exhibition of Barbara Hepworth’s work in the UK since the artist’s death in 1975.

The exhibition presents an in-depth view of the Wakefield-born artist’s life, interests, work and legacy. It displays some of Hepworth’s most celebrated sculptures including the modern abstract carving that launched her career in the 1920s and 1930s, her iconic strung sculptures of the 1940s and 1950s, and large scale bronze and carved sculptures from later in her career. Key loans from national public collections are being shown alongside works from private collections that have not been on public display since the 1970s, as well as rarely seen drawings, paintings and fabric designs. It reveals how Hepworth’s wide sphere of interests comprising music, dance, science, space exploration, politics and religion, as well as events in her personal life, influenced her work.

Contemporary artists Tacita Dean and Veronica Ryan have been commissioned to create new works which are being presented within the exhibition. Each artist explores themes and ideas that interested Hepworth and that continue to resonate with their own work. Artworks by Bridget Riley from the 1960s are also being presented in dialogue with Hepworth’s work from the same period.

To coincide with the exhibition, The Hepworth Wakefield’s curator Eleanor Clayton has written a major new biography on the artist, published by Thames & Hudson. Eleanor Clayton said: ‘Barbara Hepworth is one of the most important artists of the 20th century, with a unique artistic vision that demands to be looked at in depth. This exhibition will shine a light on Hepworth’s wide-ranging interests and how they infused her art practice. Deeply spiritual and passionately engaged with political, social and technological debates in the 20th century, Hepworth was obsessed with how the physical encounter with sculpture could impact the viewer and alter their perception of the world.’

Simon Wallis, Director of The Hepworth Wakefield, said: ‘Lockdown continues to be an ongoing challenge for us all, so I’m delighted we’ll be celebrating, post-lockdown, our 10th anniversary with an in-depth exploration of the art and life of Barbara Hepworth, Wakefield’s most famous daughter. With this major exhibition and new book, we’ll continue to build on the legacy and influence of a key pioneer of modern sculpture. Hepworth is a daily inspiration for us at the gallery and we look forward to sharing some of her greatest work with a wide new audience.’

The exhibition in detail

The exhibition opens with an introduction to Barbara Hepworth’s work, showing the three sculptural forms she returned to repeatedly throughout her career using a variety of different materials. A detailed look at Hepworth’s childhood in Yorkshire through archive material and photographs includes some of the artist’s earliest- known paintings, carvings and life drawings as she began to explore movement and the human form. A proponent of direct carving, Hepworth combined an acute sensitivity to the organic materials of wood and stone with the development of a radical new abstract language of form.

Hepworth’s determination to break free from accepted tradition was enhanced by travelling to Paris in 1932 where she visited the studios of many of the leading European avant-garde artists including Jean Arp, Constantin Brancusi and Pablo Picasso. A large section looks at Hepworth’s development of abstraction in the 1930s including Three Forms (1935) created shortly after she gave birth to triplets, an event she felt invigorated her work towards a bolder language of geometric form. One of the few examples in existence of Hepworth’s first coloured stringed sculptures in plaster, made during World War Two, is being shown alongside the many drawings she created during this period when sculptural materials were scarce. She described these drawings as ‘my sculptures born in the disguise of two dimensions.’

The exhibition reveals the artist’s creative process, drawing on new research from the recently established Hepworth Research Network (HRN), in collaboration with the Universities of York and Huddersfield, into the ways material factors shaped Hepworth’s sculptures and how they related to her broader conceptual and aesthetic concerns. This includes how starting bronze casting in the 1950s enabled Hepworth to create new forms and how, later in life, she experimented with new materials such as lead crystal and aluminium. On display is The Hepworth Wakefield’s unique collection of 44 surviving prototypes in plaster, aluminium and wood, many of which show the marks of Hepworth’s own hand and tools. These are being shown with a specially commissioned intervention by artist Veronica Ryan, the first artist to undertake a residency in Hepworth’s old studio in St Ives, where the prototypes once stood.

Hepworth’s broader interests – such as music, dance, theatre, politics, Greek mythology, and science – influenced her sculptures throughout her life. In the immediate post-war period she became fascinated with the interaction between figures – both in groups in her studio and observed around her, and also in a series of ‘Hospital drawings’, capturing surgeons at work in the early days of the National Health Service. These paintings and drawings capture her belief in the importance of unifying mental and physical existence – the ‘proper coordination between hand and spirit in our daily life’, to create a productive and positive society.

In 1951 Hepworth met composer Priaulx Rainier, and subsequently made several works inspired by the parallels between musical form and abstract sculpture. This coincided with her first theatrical design, for the 1951 production of Electra at The Old Vic. Archive photographs are being displayed together with Apollo (1951), a metal sculpture that formed part of the stage set, along with costume and set designs for the 1955 opera by Michael Tippett, A Midsummer Marriage, staged in 1955 at the Royal Opera House. This section of the exhibition also explores Hepworth’s passion for dance, and how she captured movement with gestural paintings and sculptures such as Forms in Movement (Galliard) (1956) and Curved Form (Pavan) (1956).

During the 1960s, Hepworth was a key cultural figure. She staged major exhibitions, presented work in experimental ways, made large-scale sculptures and explored colour in the patination of bronzes or painted surfaces of her carving. She played an active role in both local and international politics, campaigned for nuclear disarmament and supported pacifist causes. Her political values were encapsulated in the monumental Single Form, commissioned for the United Nations in 1964, of which she declared, ‘The United Nations is our conscience. If it succeeds it is our success. If it fails it is our failure.’ Rare footage of Hepworth’s speaking at the unveiling of this work as been included in the exhibition.

A group of works have been brought together to reveal the influence of the decade of space exploration on Hepworth, from Disc with Strings (Moon) (1969), made the year Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, to Four Hemispheres, inspired by the Telstar satellite. Hepworth noted at the end of the decade, ‘Man’s discovery of flight has radically altered the shape of our sculpture, just as it has altered our thinking.’

The final section of the exhibition looks at Hepworth’s last years, featuring her experiments with new materials and techniques, which incorporate bold colours and luminescent surfaces, while consistently seeking to use abstract form to express universal human experiences.

Barbara Hepworth is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, and her organic sculptures have come to exemplify three-dimensional modernist art. Published at a time of increasing interest in her work, this biography moves beyond the traditional narratives of modernism to provide comprehensive insight into Hepworth’s remarkable life, work, and legacy.

Press release from the Hepworth Wakefield website

Barbara Hepworth growing up
c. 1919
Courtesy Bowness

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Mother and Child
1934
Pink Ancaster stone
Purchased by Wakefield Corporation in 1951
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Three Forms
1935
Serravezza marble on marble base
210 × 532 × 343mm, 23 kg
Tate. Presented by Mr and Mrs J.R. Marcus Brumwell 1964
On loan to The Hepworth Wakefield
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness

In 1934 Barbara Hepworth’s abstraction based on the human figure gave way to an art of pure form. With such works as Three Forms she reduced her sculpture to the most simple shapes and eradicated almost all colour. She said later that she was ‘absorbed in the relationships in space, in size and texture and weight, as well as the tensions between forms’. While the three elements are slightly imperfect in shape, their sizes and the spaces between them are precisely proportional to each other. This reflects her concern with the craft of hand-carving and with harmonious arrangement of form.

Gallery label, September 2004

Text from the Tate website

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Reconstruction
1947
© Bowness, Hepworth Estate / Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre, London
Courtesy of the Hepworth Wakefield

Barbara Hepworth at work on Contrapuntal Forms by floodlight
25 October 1950
Official Festival photograph
National Archives © Bowness

Barbara Hepworth – Turning Forms at the Festival of Britain
1951
© Bowness
Photo: Anthony Panting

A richly illustrated biography on the life and work of Barbara Hepworth, one of the twentieth century’s most inspiring artists and a pioneer of modernist sculpture.

In her lifetime, Hepworth was reproached for single-mindedness, with critics and commentators framing her work and demeanour as “cool and restrained.” Moreover, most exhibitions of her work in the twentieth century focused on Hepworth’s modernist abstract sculpture of the 1930s and its relation to her male contemporaries, leaving vast swathes of work overlooked, such as her largest and most significant public commission, the sculpture outside the UN building in New York.

This fully illustrated biography reflects Hepworth’s multifaceted and interdisciplinary approach, shedding new light on her interests in music, dance, poetry, contemporary politics, science, and technology. Author Eleanor Clayton uncovers Hepworth’s engagement with these fields through friends and networks and examines how they show up in Hepworth’s artistic practice, and how the artist synthesised seemingly conflicting disciplines and ideas into one coherent and inspirational philosophy of art and life.

Installation view of Barbara Hepworth, Orpheus
1956
Photographed at The Hepworth Wakefield, March 2020
Photo: Lewis Ronald

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Forms In Movement (Galliard)
1956
Copper
89cm

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Curved Forms (Pavan)
1956
Impregnated plaster, painted, on an aluminium armature
52 x 80 x 48.5cm
Presented by the artist’s daughters, Rachel Kidd and Sarah Bowness, through the Trustees of the Barbara Hepworth Estate and the Art Fund
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness
Photo: Mark Heathcote

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Totem
1960-1962
Wakefield Permanent Art Collection
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness
Photo: Jerry Hardman-Jones

Val Wilmer
Barbara Hepworth in the Palais de la Danse studio, St Ives, at work on the wood carving ‘Hollow Form with White Interior’
1963
© Bowness, Hepworth Estate

Barbara Hepworth with the Gift plaster of Figure for Landscape and a bronze cast of Figure (Archaean)
November 1964
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness
Photo: Lucien Myers

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Disc with Strings (Moon)
1969

Fifteen years before Hepworth (1903-1975) made Disc with Strings (Moon), the author William Golding wrote these words:

“Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling; and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved further along the island and the water lifted.”

Though Golding was not writing about the British Isles, his words suggest the kind of large-scale, god-like perspective of earth which mid-century artists like himself and Hepworth were capable of. Disc with Strings (Moon) carries an undertow of planet-sized thinking, and the work is concerned not with reference to human life but, rather, with the fluid, open-ended life of the universe. …

When Disc with Strings (Moon) is viewed from the front, the two halves of the concave disc have subtly different colour values. Though the brushed aluminium surface is uniform all over the work, a viewer perceives two different values because the two halves of the sculpture reflect light differently. While the forward-facing half of the disc reflects the light directly into the viewer’s eye, the other canted half reflects light away and therefore appears comparatively darker. When viewed from the other side, the colour values of the two halves are reversed.

The introduction of string into the sculpture contributes further to this subtle interplay of visual effects. Speaking to the critic Herbert Read in 1952, Hepworth said that “[t]he strings were the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills.” In short, they were a metaphor for her deeply personal response to the elements of nature. In Disc with Strings (Moon), they also seem to register the rippling of waves, passing over the surface of the moon when it appears reflected in the sea.

Anonymous. “InSight No. XII,” on the Piano Nobile website May 13, 2020 [Online] Cited 12/07/2021.

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Four Hemispheres
1970
Glass lead crystal

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Sun Setting, The Aegean Suite
1971
Lithograph on paper
The Hepworth Wakefield (Wakefield Permanent Art Collection)
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness

Barbara Hepworth (English, 1903-1975)
Cone and Sphere
1973
White marble
Hepworth Estate, on long loan to The Hepworth Wakefield (Wakefield Permanent Art Collection)
Barbara Hepworth © Bowness
Photo: Mark Heathcote