Barbara Hepworth

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Barbara Hepworth
Hepworth FamilyOfMan 1970.jpg
Hepworth's Family of Man (1970), bronze, Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Birth name Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth
Born 10 January 1903
Wakefield, West Yorkshire,
Died 20 May 1975, (age 72)
St Ives, Cornwall
Nationality British
Field Sculpture
Training Leeds School of Art, Royal College of Art
Movement Modernism, Abstract art
Influenced by Henry Moore
Awards DBE

Dame Barbara Hepworth DBE (10 January 1903 – 20 May 1975) was an English sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism, and with such contemporaries as Ivon Hitchens, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Naum Gabo she helped to develop modern art (sculpture in particular) in Britain.

Life and work

1966

Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield,[1]West Yorkshire, the eldest child of Herbert and Gertrude Hepworth. Her father was a civil engineer for the West Riding County Council, who in 1921 became County Surveyor. She attended Wakefield Girls High School, and won a scholarship and studied at the Leeds School of Art from 1920 (where she met Moore). She then won a County scholarship to the Royal College of Art and studied there from 1921 until she was awarded the diploma of the Royal College of Art in 1924.[2] She later studied for a period in Italy.

Hepworth's first marriage was to the sculptor John Skeaping.[3] Her second marriage was to the painter Ben Nicholson. They married on 17 November 1938 at Hampstead Register Office. The couple had triplets in 1934, Simon, Rachel and Sarah; Simon also became an artist. The couple divorced in 1951. Her eldest son, Paul, was killed on 13 February 1953 in a plane crash while serving with the Royal Air Force in Thailand. Hepworth created a memorial to him, entitled Madonna and Child,[4] in the church in St Ives.[5]

One of her most prestigious works is Single Form,[6] in memory of her friend and collector of her works Dag Hammarskjöld, at the United Nations building in New York City. It was commissioned in 1961 by the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation following Hammarskjöld's death in a plane crash.

Some of her smaller works were produced in limited editions.[7] One example is the bronze Oval Form (1965), about six inches across, which had an edition of 9 copies, one of which she donated as a school prize to St Ives School in Cornwall, where she was governor.[7] It was latterly used as a paperwight.[8]

Hepworth was featured in the 1964 documentary film 5 British Sculptors (Work and Talk) by American filmmaker Warren Forma. She was made a dame in 1965,[9] ten years before her death during a fire in her St Ives studio in Cornwall, aged seventy-two.

On 20 December 2011, her 1969 sculpture Two Forms (Divided Circle) was stolen, from its plinth in Dulwich Park, South London, by suspected scrap metal thieves. The piece, which had been in the park since 1970, was insured for £500,000, a spokesman for Southwark Council said.[10]

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Galleries holding her work

Hepworth's former studio and home now form the Barbara Hepworth Museum. A new £35 million museum dedicated to Hepworth, the Hepworth Wakefield, opened in Britain in May 2011 at Wakefield in West Yorkshire.[11][12][13]

Her work may also be seen at St Catherine's College, Oxford,[14] the School of Music at Cardiff University,[15] the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in West Bretton, West Yorkshire; Clare College,[16]Churchill College[17] and Murray Edwards College (formerly New Hall),[18]Cambridge; Snape Maltings, Snape, Suffolk; and on view in or attached to the John Lewis department store,[19] part of the John Lewis Partnership, in Oxford Street (see picture); and Kenwood House, both in London. Seaform (Atlantic) may be viewed in a newly created open space on St George's Street Norwich; it has been seen to be used by the Norwich parcour group to hang from horizontally and move through its apertures as part of their own physical urban art form (the sculpture was relocated from the Norwich Castle gardens for fear the precious bronze would be stolen and melted down for scrap).[20] Her 1966 work, Construction (Crucifixion): Homage to Mondrian,[21] can be seen in the grounds of Winchester Cathedral next to The Pilgrims' School; Hieroglyph can be seen at Leeds Art Gallery.[22] The Tate Gallery owns many of her works. In the Netherlands, the Kröller-Müller Museum also owns several of her sculptures. Curved Form (Trevalgan) (1956), which stood in Margaret Gardiner's rear garden in Hampstead, is now at the Pier Art Gallery in Stromness together with 67 other works donated by Gardiner. Trevalgan was Hepworth's first entire bronze form.

Marble portrait heads dating from London, ca. 1927, of Barbara Hepworth by John Skeaping, and of Skeaping by Hepworth, are documented by photograph in the Skeaping Retrospective catalogue,[23] but are both believed to be lost.

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Gallery

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List of selected works

Winged Figure, 1963, on the side of the John Lewis department store, Oxford Street, London
Sphere with Inner Form (1963) at the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands.
Two Forms (Divided Circle), 1969, St Ives
1928 Doves Parian marble
1932–33 Seated Figure lignum vitae
1933 Two Forms alabaster and limestone
1934 Mother and Child Cumberland alabaster
1935 Three Forms Seravezza marble
1936 Ball Plane and Hole lignum vitae, mahogany and oak
1937 Pierced Hemisphere 1 white marble
1940 Sculpture with Colour (Deep Blue and Red) mixed
1943 Oval Sculpture cast material
1943–44 Wave wood, paint and string
1944 Landscape Sculpture wood (cast in bronze, 1961)
1946 Pelagos wood, paint and string
Tides wood and paint
1947 Blue and green (arthroplasty) 31 December 1947 oil and pencil on pressed paperboard
1949 Operation: Case for Discussion oil and pencil on pressed paperboard
1951 Group I (Concourse) 4 February 1951 Serravezza marble
1953 Hieroglyph Ancaster stone
1954–55 Two Figures teak and paint
1955 Oval Sculpture (Delos) scented guarea wood and paint
1955–56 Coré bronze
1956 Curved Form (Trevalgan) bronze (see external link to collection of Margaret Gardiner)
1956 Orpheus (Maquette), Version II brass and cotton string
Stringed Figure (Curlew), Version II brass and cotton string
1958 Cantate Domino bronze
Sea Form (Porthmeor) bronze
1959 Curved form with inner form – anima bronze
1960 Figure for Landscape bronze
Archaeon bronze
1961 Curved Form (Bryher) bronze
1962–63 Bronze Form (Patmos) bronze
19663 Winged Figure bronze
1963-65 Sphere with Inner Form bronze
1964 Rock Form (Porthcurno) bronze
Sea Form (Atlantic) bronze
Oval Form (Trezion) bronze
1966 Figure in a Landscape bronze on wooden base
Four-Square Walk Through bronze
1968 Two Figures bronze and gold
1969 Two Forms (Divided Circle) bronze
1970 Family of Man bronze
1971 The Aegean Suite series of prints
Summer Dance painted bronze
1972 Minoan Head marble on wooden base
Assembly of Sea Forms white marble
mounted on stainless steel base
1973? Conversation with Magic Stones bronze and silver
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See also

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References and sources

References
  1. ^ "Barbara Hepworth online bio". Robertsandelson.com. Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 11 December 2011. 
  2. ^ www.cornwall.gov.uk[dead link]
  3. ^ Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975). Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, 2013, Retrieved 14 May 2013. Archived here.
  4. ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  5. ^ "Lenin Imports website". Leninimports.com. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  6. ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. 11 June 1964. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  7. ^ a b "Falmouth National Maritime Museum 2". Antiques Roadshow. Series 35. Episode 8. 2012-11-25. BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00zjj80. Retrieved 2012-11-25.
  8. ^ Dixon, Hayley. "Barbara Hepworth paperweight on headteacher's desk for decades is £80k piece". Mail Online. Retrieved 24 January 2013. 
  9. ^ The London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 43667. p. 5480. 4 June 1965. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
  10. ^ "Barbara Hepworth sculpture stolen from Dulwich park, BBC News Website". bbc.co.uk. 20 December 2011. Retrieved 21 December 2011. 
  11. ^ An Ambitious $56 Million Barbara Hepworth Museum Grows in Yorkshire ARTINFO.com
  12. ^ "Hepworth Wakefield website". Hepworthwakefield.com. 27 May 2011. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  13. ^ "New Barbara Hepworth gallery opens in Wakefield". BBC News (BBC). 21 May 2011. Archived from the original on 21 May 2011. Retrieved 6 June 2011. 
  14. ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  15. ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  16. ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  17. ^ "Hepworth official website, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  18. ^ "Murray Edwards College, Cambridge website". Murrayedwards.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  19. ^ "Hepworth online bio, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  20. ^ "Norwich Sculpture Trails". Recording Archive for Public Sculpture in Norfolk and Suffolk. 
  21. ^ "Hepworth official website, ibid". Barbarahepworth.org.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  22. ^ "Leeds Art Gallery website". Leedsartgallery.co.uk. Retrieved 13 November 2011. 
  23. ^ John Skeaping 1901–80: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Arthur Ackermann and Son, London, 1991, page 7
Sources
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External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Barbara Hepworth
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Barbara Hepworth
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Further reading

Authority control
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Last modified on 14 May 2013, at 12:40