Shaping art - modernist sculptor Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth was an English artist and sculptor born in Wakefield in 1903. Her work made a significant contribution to Modernist creative ideas, and in particular, free form modern sculpture. Some of her work became a familiar feature of the public realm, and is now often unnoticed.
During the First and Second World Wars, Hepworth was a prominent figure in the colony of artists who resided in St Ives, Cornwall.
Hepworth, a leading figure in the arts movement of the time, was the first to sculpt pierced figures. These were central to her practice, and were strong early examples of modernism in sculpture. Her most famous masterpieces are her pierced sculptures, such as Single Form and Pierced Form.
Hepworth’s pierced figures were particularly influential for Henry Moore, a friend and contemporary creative. As their careers progressed, Hepworth’s work became more intimately connected to the forms she saw on the Cornish coast, whilst Moore’s sculptures addressed the human figure.
An example of Hepworth's work in the public realm is her piece Winged Figure, on the side of the John Lewis building in Oxford Street.
Made a Dame in 1965, ten years later Hepworth died in a fire in her studio. A year after, her family opened The Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden in St Ives, as requested in her will.
There is also much of her work in the Hepworth Wakefield, an art museum in which opened in her hometown in West Yorkshire in 2011. It includes 44 plaster and aluminium working models donated by Barbara Hepworth's family, and temporary exhibitions of contemporary art, including by Henry Moore, who was born in nearby Castleford.
Further reading
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