Barbara Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975), one of the most important artists of the 20th century, was born in Wakefield.

Her father was a surveyor for West Riding County Council, and Hepworth accompanied him on his inspections of local roads and bridges.

At Wakefield Girls’ High School Hepworth was inspired by seeing images of Egyptian sculpture and encouraged by the headteacher, Miss McCroben, to apply for a scholarship to Leeds School of Art.

Following this, in 1921, she began her studies at the Royal College of Art in London.

Hepworth in the 1920s and 1930s

On completing her degree in 1924, Hepworth was awarded a West Riding travel scholarship, enabling her to travel to Italy. She learnt to carve from a master-carver in Rome, where she met her first husband and fellow artist John Skeaping.

The couple returned to London in 1926 as proponents of ‘direct carving’, the practice of carving directly into wood or stone, rather than modelling sculpture in clay for a master-craftsman to then make the finished work.

Hepworth and Skeaping separated in 1931, and Hepworth became part of an artistic circle that included Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson, with whom she lived in Hampstead during the 1930s.

Representational aspects of Hepworth’s work gave way to geometric shapes, as in Pierced Hemisphere I and Two Forms.

Hepworth would later relate this shift to having triplets with Nicholson in 1934, noting that after this ‘the work was more formal, and all traces of naturalism had disappeared, and for some years I was absorbed in the relationships in space, in size and texture and weight, as well as in the tensions between the forms.’

Mid-career

Hepworth moved to St Ives in 1939, the same year she begun making stringed sculptures. As seen in her ‘Landscape Sculpture’ works of the late 1940s, Hepworth connected these forms to nature noting, ‘the strings were the tension I felt between myself and the sea, the wind or the hills.’ Living in close proximity to the countryside, Hepworth reflected in 1946, ‘The main sources of my inspiration are the human figure and the landscape; also the one in relation to the other.’

In 1951, Hepworth had a solo exhibition at Wakefield Art Gallery, which toured to York and Manchester.

Later life

Hepworth took on a number of important public commissions in later life. On permanent display at The Hepworth Wakefield is the aluminium prototype for Winged Figure (1961–3), commissioned by John Lewis for their flagship store on Oxford Street, London. At nearly six metres high, this is the only working model to survive from the monumental commissions Hepworth received at this time.

Hepworth was prolific during her later years, making nearly as many works during the 1960s as between 1925 and 1960. She experimented with new materials, working in bronze, slate and printmaking noting, ‘while always remaining constant to my conviction about truth to material, I have found a greater freedom for myself’.’