Barbara Hepworth: Master of Modern Sculpture
In the face of adversity in the male dominated Modern art movement, Barbara Hepworth was praised within her lifetime as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century.
She pioneered abstract sculpture, creating a new visual language that explored not how the Cornish landscape looked, but how it made her feel.
Born in Wakefield in 1903, Barbara Hepworth was the daughter of a civil engineer. As a young girl, she would accompany her father on his car journeys around the West Riding, where he would conduct surveys of the local roads and bridges. Showing a keen interest at an early age in ancient Egyptian sculptures, she was encouraged to apply to Leeds School of Art – for which she won a scholarship to attend. Here, alongside fellow Modernist Sculptor Henry Moore, Hepworth began to develop her pioneering style, before completing her degree at The Royal College of Art in London.
After graduating in 1924, Hepworth was awarded a travel bursary, enabling her to travel to Italy to study under master sculptor, Giovanni Ardini. It was during her time here that she met her first husband, the artist John Skeaping. The pair returned to London in 1926 as proponents of ‘direct carving’ – the practice of directly carving into wood or stone. Hepworth was so passionate about her practice, that it was only later in life that she had assistants to help her complete her work.
‘All my early memories are of forms and shapes and textures. Moving through and over the West Riding landscape with my father in his car, the hills were sculptures; the roads defined the forms.’
Barbara Hepworth, speaking in the BBC film Barbara Hepworth (Dir. John Read, 1961)
In 1939 upon the outbreak of WW2, the sculptor left London for the safety of Cornwall. She had remarried in 1938 to the Modernist painter Ben Nicholson, and the couple along with their triplets settled in St. Ives, where she developed her pioneering style of sculpture.
She fell in love with Cornwall, and remained there for the rest of her life. In love with the unique landscape, from the granite boulders that perched on hilltops, to the ancient monuments that can be found in rolling hills, she found endless inspiration for her tactile forms.
In her visionary and abstract works, Hepworth sought to convey not what she saw, but the way it made her feel.
Initially she carved into small blocks of wood, dramatically hollowing them and developing a new visual language by creating space within the subject. As she became internationally renowned in the 1950s, she had to consider new materials for her works.
Her beloved wooden sculptures that often also featured fisherman’s twine from the local harbour were not strong enough to travel to exhibitions overseas. It was at this time that she began to create works in bronze. Offering new possibilities, this transition saw her style progress. The bronze offered her the opportunity to create in higher volumes in a more robust material, that could also create forms with thinner and broader features.
Her home and studio, Trewyn, had a beautiful garden that Hepworth herself maintained. Here she worked, witnessing the changing weather, and the cycles of the sun and the moon, which appear in many of the drawings and lithographic prints she made in her later years.
Hepworth’s drawings are often eclipsed by her sculpture work, but they show a highly-skilled draughtsmanship. Hepworth often combined her drawings with paint and described them as ‘sculptures born in the disguise of two dimensions’.
In her drawings Hepworth creates space, shapes and texture through the use of transparent smooth layers and bold mark-making, sometimes made in parallel with related sculptures. She noted in 1965, ‘when I start drawing and painting abstract forms I am really exploring new forms, hollows and tensions which will lead me where I need to go.’
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